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Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Bob Left Sets podcast, the

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Speaker 1: first live podcast ever here at the USC Festival of Books.

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Speaker 1: It's April twenty one, day before my birthday. You start

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Speaker 1: day again, and uh my special guest today is Moby

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Speaker 1: and I thank you all for being here because we

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Speaker 1: had a hard time getting here. We did not connect,

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Speaker 1: we went to diff It was like our own little

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Speaker 1: spinal tap moment. So I would we miss if I

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Speaker 1: didn't ask you, Moby that it being April twenty one,

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Speaker 1: the day after a VICI passed away, do you have

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Speaker 1: any thoughts about a VICI? Uh? Boy, oh boy. By

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Speaker 1: the way, first of all, if tomorrow is your birthday,

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Speaker 1: all I can say is like the thirties can be

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Speaker 1: a challenging decade, but there's there's a lot of room

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Speaker 1: for growth. Well. I don't want to reveal how old

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Speaker 1: I am as but you can look it up online.

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Speaker 1: Thirty was bad. I thirty was no big deal. Forty

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Speaker 1: was bad, Fifty was no big deal. You're you're fifty

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Speaker 1: point sixty? Really fucked me up. I'm still funning, okay.

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Speaker 1: Um So a VICHI, Well, I guess it's speaking of

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Speaker 1: getting older or not getting older it's just, I mean,

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Speaker 1: there's so much to say about that. When someone dies

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Speaker 1: so young, it's just I mean, I'm stating the obvious.

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Speaker 1: But it's tragic, it's heartbreaking, it's unnecessary. It's just like

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Speaker 1: the fact that death is the one unavoidable fact of

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Speaker 1: our existence. Why hurry it along? You know? Like I

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Speaker 1: remember when I was a depressed teenager listening to joy

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Speaker 1: Division and wanting to throw myself off a bridge. I

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Speaker 1: thought to myself, I was like, you know, I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: die eventually. Why not just stick around and see what happens?

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Speaker 1: You know? Wow, But you have been part of this

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Speaker 1: world for decades to what degreed you believe the lifestyle

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Speaker 1: of DJs would contribute to their demise? Uh? I mean,

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Speaker 1: certainly there's very little about being a traveling professional DJ

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Speaker 1: that's healthy. You know, even if you're sober and doing it,

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Speaker 1: it's still pretty shitty, you know, like meaning like you're

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Speaker 1: an airport, you're eating garbage food in airports. You stay

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Speaker 1: in hotels, and even like the nicest hotel is still

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Speaker 1: an artificial environment with recycled air. And especially like young kids,

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Speaker 1: and you know that you're old when you start referring

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Speaker 1: to the youth as being something you're not. You know.

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Speaker 1: I remember hearing Obama say like young people, and I

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Speaker 1: was like, oh does that mean, like but but he's young,

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Speaker 1: so okay. So so even without drugs and alcohol and whatnot,

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Speaker 1: touring is unhealthy, you know, like it's very as you

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Speaker 1: know from a lifetime of being around on this, Like

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Speaker 1: you look at anyone who's been touring for a while

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Speaker 1: and they start to look like the crypt keeper Um

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Speaker 1: or Gollum in my case. And but then you add

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Speaker 1: in all the free alcohol and the drugs that are

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Speaker 1: just thrown at you, like I've been sobered out for

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Speaker 1: about ten years. But pre that, thanks um, but pre that.

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Speaker 1: I mean, like if if you're on tour and you're

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Speaker 1: playing a concert, you know, you play your concert, you

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Speaker 1: get on the bus and you leave, and so you

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Speaker 1: can be degenerate, but not that degenerate. Whereas the world

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Speaker 1: of celebrity DJs, they have their own planes. They fly

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Speaker 1: to Abisa, they fly to Las Vegas, they fly wherever.

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Speaker 1: They stay in huge palatial presidential suites. They do their

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Speaker 1: deejaying and then afterwards endless partying, which is great but

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Speaker 1: so destructive and so corrosive. So okay in your a

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Speaker 1: particular case, what caused you to get sober? Uh? So?

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Speaker 1: In nine two, do you remember the been Big Audio Dynamite.

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Speaker 1: So I was opening up for Big Audio Dynamites Switter

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Speaker 1: group from the Clash, Yeah, Mick Jones and Don Let's

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Speaker 1: I think um. So I was opening up for Big

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Speaker 1: Audio Dynamite UM at Roseland and New York City, and

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Speaker 1: we had dinner beforehand at a vegan restaurant called zen Palette,

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Speaker 1: and I ate a purple Japanese egg plant and it

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Speaker 1: disagreed with me. To this day, I've never eaten another

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Speaker 1: purple Japanese egg plant because I had a little upset

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Speaker 1: stomach as opposed to drinking, where I had thousands and

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Speaker 1: thousands of soul destroying, debilitating hangovers. But I kept doing it,

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Speaker 1: and I think I realized that indicated that I had

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Speaker 1: a problem. You know, when you're hungover for the five

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Speaker 1: thousandth time, you're like, oh, why do I keep doing this?

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Speaker 1: When it's like it's just this I don't know, diminishing returns.

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Speaker 1: So was he just one day you woke up and

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Speaker 1: said this is it? It was? I tried getting sober

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Speaker 1: multiple times and then this with the programmer by yourself.

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Speaker 1: Eventually it was just a UM, I mean it works

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Speaker 1: for me, if other people get sober without a God

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Speaker 1: bless there's no right way to do it. Um. But

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Speaker 1: it was October seventeenth, two thousand and eight. I had

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Speaker 1: played a fundraiser for Kristen Gillibrand, Um, she was running

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Speaker 1: to take Hillary Clinton's seat, and just had just a

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Speaker 1: stupid night not with her. I'm not trying to throw Kristin.

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Speaker 1: Jillibrand was like, we weren't you know, we weren't up

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Speaker 1: at four o'clock in the morning doing cocaine and talking

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Speaker 1: about how we should start a band. Yeah, that would

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Speaker 1: be now. She left early on good for her. And

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Speaker 1: then I found myself at like four o'clock in the

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Speaker 1: morning at some dive bar and Hudson, New York, standing

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Speaker 1: on stage asking if anyone there could sell me drugs,

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Speaker 1: and then buying drugs and doing them by myself, and

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Speaker 1: then at nine o'clock in the morning getting on amtrack

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Speaker 1: and I hadn't slept, and I felt like death had

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Speaker 1: like put me in a bag and thrown me down

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Speaker 1: a flight of concrete stairs, like I just destroyed. And

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Speaker 1: I thought you know this isn't getting better, and then

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Speaker 1: you have that decision to do immediately go with a yeah.

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Speaker 1: I went to an a meeting and just sat there,

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Speaker 1: started crying and said, I'm Moby, I'm an alcoholic. And

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Speaker 1: that was day one. And what did you learn in

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Speaker 1: the I used to drink and I stopped drinking for

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Speaker 1: a cornucopy of reasons, and for like the first thirty

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Speaker 1: days was a lifestyle change, like the things places I

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Speaker 1: would normally go, I will go. And then it was

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Speaker 1: earlier when a lot of people were not sober. It

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Speaker 1: was really quite a head speaking experience, irrelevant of not

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Speaker 1: waking up over well. Especially I lived in Lower Manhattan

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Speaker 1: and so in New York. For anyone who's spent time

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Speaker 1: in New York, you know that it's paradise for degenerates

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Speaker 1: like it and something you can afford to live in Manhattan.

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Speaker 1: But like the ethos of New York is just abject

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Speaker 1: debauchery and degeneracy. It doesn't matter who you are, like

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Speaker 1: where you are on the socio economic spectrum, Like if

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Speaker 1: you're not drinking and doing drugs in New York, you're

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Speaker 1: missing out on why you should be in New York.

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Speaker 1: Um so yes, So suddenly I was sober, living in

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Speaker 1: the East Village and having my recording studio on the

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Speaker 1: Lower East Side. So every day I would like walk

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Speaker 1: home from work past all the bars where I used

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Speaker 1: to get drunk, to go eat cereal and watch the

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Speaker 1: Daily Show, and which was good. I wasn't hungover, but

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Speaker 1: I was missing out on everything. And to this day,

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Speaker 1: I still don't know how I stuck with it. You

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Speaker 1: know why on one of those walk homes, I didn't

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Speaker 1: just like go into a dive bar, get drunk and

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Speaker 1: try to convince some like, oh pair to go home

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Speaker 1: with me. Let's go back to the beginning. You grew

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Speaker 1: up in dry In, Connecticut, not far from where I

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Speaker 1: grew up in Fearfield, Connecticut. Darien is a very upscale

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Speaker 1: room community. Most people work in Manhattan. However, there are

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Speaker 1: other people of not of that economic caliber. So what

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Speaker 1: was your experience growing up in day? So I was

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Speaker 1: born on a street in Harlem, and then my dad

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Speaker 1: died when I was two, and my mom happened to

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Speaker 1: know what. He died of alcoholism. He drove into a wall,

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Speaker 1: and so clearly it's we drove in a wall metaphorically

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Speaker 1: or literally literally, I mean, I guess it worked on

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Speaker 1: a metaphoric level, like no, he literally drove into a

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Speaker 1: wall on a Jersey turnpike at a hundred miles an hour. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: pre airbags. So it didn't work out too well. Um,

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Speaker 1: And so my mom moved us back to dry Enne

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Speaker 1: where she had grown up. But we were poor, white trash.

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Speaker 1: We were on food stamps and on welfare. We lived,

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Speaker 1: and it was from dairy En. Did she come from

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Speaker 1: an upscale family? Her dad, my grandfather, worked on Wall Street,

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Speaker 1: And so she moved us back to Darien because the

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Speaker 1: schools were good, it was familiar, and she had family around.

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Speaker 1: So what was your experience like constant shame because you

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Speaker 1: were not one of the wealthy people. Yeah, because we were.

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Speaker 1: So my mom was a pot smoking hippie who dated

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Speaker 1: Hell's Angels and Darien is the land of like Lily

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Speaker 1: Pulitzer pants and golf country clubs and you know, like

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Speaker 1: my first serious girlfriend heard she came from the Rand family.

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Speaker 1: Sorry I don't, I'm I hope I'm not going to

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Speaker 1: get her in trouble, like, you know, the Rand Corporation,

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Speaker 1: Like that's her posse. Her family and her dad owned

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Speaker 1: a fleet of oil tankers. So that's my first serious girlfriend,

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Speaker 1: my second serious girlfriend. Her grandfather was Bill Hewlett, who

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Speaker 1: started Hewlett Packard. So it's like a level of wealth

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Speaker 1: that you can't imagine. And my mom and I were

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Speaker 1: on food stamps and welfare and I would come home

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Speaker 1: and she would be, you know, like smoking pot in

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Speaker 1: the kitchen with her Hell's Angel's boyfriend. And was there

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Speaker 1: music in the house constantly? And what music did you hear? Everything?

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Speaker 1: My mom had the most remarkable taste in books, which

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Speaker 1: is Germaine. As we're at the l a Time festival books.

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Speaker 1: That's what's called right yeah? Um? And so I mean

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Speaker 1: because she had been a literature major at Barnard, and

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Speaker 1: you graduated from Barnard, she eventually graduated from East Khan

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Speaker 1: and Dan Barry. Um, so she went back. It shows

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Speaker 1: a level of perseverance despite being a you know what,

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Speaker 1: Hell's Angel dating hippie. Yeah, when she was really aeradite

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Speaker 1: and academic. She just liked bad boys. Um. So. But

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Speaker 1: her book collection, I mean, like I grew up reading

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Speaker 1: Faulkner and Rambo and Dyukowski when I was twelve years old,

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Speaker 1: just because she didn't turn them on to you just

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Speaker 1: saw him on the shelf and you pulled them down.

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Speaker 1: I was talking about this earlier with a nice man

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Speaker 1: at PBS. I was like, when you're twelve years old

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Speaker 1: and your board in the middle of the summer and

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Speaker 1: there's nothing good on TV. You go to the bookshelf

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Speaker 1: and you see as a as I lay dying and

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Speaker 1: you're like, that sounds cool, or you know, like a

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Speaker 1: Season in Hell by Rambo and you're like, oh, I

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Speaker 1: want to read that, or you know Bukowski, you know,

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Speaker 1: like every book he wrote has an amazing title. So

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Speaker 1: I just started reading compulsively. And her record collection was

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Speaker 1: everything from I don't know, divor Jack to Coltrane, Like

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Speaker 1: she still maintains that I was conceived. Well, my mom

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Speaker 1: and my dad were listening to Love Supreme now that

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Speaker 1: whether it's two or not, who cares? So yeah, So

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Speaker 1: I mean Crossy Seals and Nash and Young to Stravinsky

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Speaker 1: to Bruce Springsteen too. She loved like a lot of

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Speaker 1: late sixties folk music like It's a Wonderful Day or

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Speaker 1: It's a Beautiful Day, Beautiful's a Beautiful Day and Donovan

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Speaker 1: and Jefferson Airplane and Nick Drake. So it was like she,

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Speaker 1: I grew up with an amazing record collection, just so eclectic.

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Speaker 1: And what point did you start to play music? I

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Speaker 1: started studying music when I was around nine. What was

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Speaker 1: the impetus for that? That I loved music and I

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Speaker 1: just wanted to do anything I could to be around it?

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Speaker 1: And was this private lessons? Were in school or by yourself? Well,

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Speaker 1: my mom played piano and she dated a bunch of

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Speaker 1: itinerant musicians, um one of whom was a pedal steel player.

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Speaker 1: And I tried to learn pedal steel at ten and

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Speaker 1: I couldn't like it was just too like as your

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Speaker 1: feet are doing things. So one of her boyfriends had

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Speaker 1: left a guitar behind, and so I started playing guitar.

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Speaker 1: And she had a friend who taught guitar lessons. And

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Speaker 1: he was the most idiosyncratic music teacher because he played

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Speaker 1: in a metal band. You know. He was one of

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Speaker 1: those like Deely Deally dud thinks Chris Rasola like a

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Speaker 1: phenomenal virtual so guitarist. But he loved music theory, bok

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Speaker 1: and jazz fusion. So he instilled in me like we

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Speaker 1: would study scales and deconstruct Bach cantatas and then learn

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Speaker 1: how to play purple, Hayes, This is all on the guitar.

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Speaker 1: On the guitar, that's not easy to do on the guitar. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and so you learned how to we music, and you

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Speaker 1: still read music to this day about as well as

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Speaker 1: I can read French, meaning like I can figure it

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Speaker 1: out if you hold a gun to my head. But

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Speaker 1: like like friends of mine who can cite read I'm

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Speaker 1: sure you know those people, like like you put rockman

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Speaker 1: and Off in front of them, put them to the

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Speaker 1: piano and they start playing it. Like, there's absolutely no

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Speaker 1: way I could even begin to do that. It would

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Speaker 1: take me ten minutes to get like the first stanza. Well,

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Speaker 1: in my family, we started with piano lessons, and then

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Speaker 1: of course the folk are and the Beatles came along

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Speaker 1: and we picked up guitar. But the issue was always practicing.

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Speaker 1: Did you practice? I practice constantly because I was untroubled

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Speaker 1: by much having much of a social life or a

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Speaker 1: dating life. Did you have friends. I had a few friends,

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Speaker 1: but not too many, so I had a lot of

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Speaker 1: free time growing up, you know, especially summertimes, like you

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Speaker 1: know what's like in Fairfield County, Like all the rich

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Speaker 1: kids go to country clubs, they go to Switzerland, they

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Speaker 1: go to islands like Fisher's Island and Martha's Vineyard and

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Speaker 1: Nantuckett and I stay home and watch TV, listen to records,

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Speaker 1: play guitar, drive my bike to Johnny's Records to look

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Speaker 1: at records that someday I might be able to afford.

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Speaker 1: So you're in school, your mother is highly educated. What

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Speaker 1: kind of track are you on? Are you thinking I'm

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Speaker 1: going to go to college? I can't wait to drop out?

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Speaker 1: What's going through your head? Well? When I went, I

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Speaker 1: went to Yukon Stores and Stanford. I didn't know that

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Speaker 1: I didn't graduate. And did you go for I went

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Speaker 1: to Yukon Stores for a year, went to Yukon Stamford.

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Speaker 1: This is means a lot to us um and I

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Speaker 1: went to study purchase for a little while. Let's let's

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Speaker 1: go back. You're at Yukon Stores. Yeah, isn't that like

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Speaker 1: a square peg in a round hole? Obviously that's why

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Speaker 1: I didn't stay. I mean, also I was having I

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Speaker 1: was having terrible panic attacks and I had to leave anyway.

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Speaker 1: But like Yukon Stores is known for basketball and agriculture,

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Speaker 1: and it's it's hard to say about but it's literally

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Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere, Connecticut. Yeah, it's sort of

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Speaker 1: like the let's by way of comparison, like the outskirts

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Speaker 1: of Fresno right now. Um So I was there and

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Speaker 1: this was the early eighties, and all I wanted was

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Speaker 1: to be in New York or be in London or

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Speaker 1: be in Los Angeles and be a part of a

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Speaker 1: music scene. So I would listen to music and I

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Speaker 1: would go to classes. But being in this small farm town,

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Speaker 1: it was very frustrating, and then you ended up going

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Speaker 1: to purchase to purchase. I was a philosophy major the

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Speaker 1: whole time, so if it weren't for music, I sort

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Speaker 1: of thought that my life plan was going to be

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Speaker 1: teaching philosophy at some community college somewhere. So you went

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Speaker 1: to like three or four colleges. If you were to

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Speaker 1: go back today, like in the Bruce Springsteen record where

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Speaker 1: his mother says, never would you like to go back,

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Speaker 1: how much would you have to do to graduate? I'll

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Speaker 1: probably take four years of classes. Like I don't know,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I wouldn't even know, like because this was

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Speaker 1: this was back in the forties, so like you know,

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Speaker 1: they kept records on parchment exactly. That's one of my

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Speaker 1: bad dreams. You gonna wake up one day and they'll say,

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Speaker 1: we have no record if you graduate from college. You

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Speaker 1: did go, but um, so are you going consistently from

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Speaker 1: one college to another? I was like twenty Yukon stores

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Speaker 1: dropped out about a year of like drinking and learning

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Speaker 1: how to DJ, went back to Yukon, Stamford dropped out,

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Speaker 1: went back to Sunny Purchase, and then at that point

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Speaker 1: I started to have more of a job as a DJ.

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Speaker 1: So I didn't let's say, so, if we're in the

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Speaker 1: early eighties, Okay, what does it look like being a DJ?

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Speaker 1: Then well, uh, it was not very glamorous. Remember port Chester,

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Speaker 1: New York, of course, holl of the capital of the

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Speaker 1: Capital Theater, which is now back up in the running.

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Speaker 1: Everyone's right over the border from Connecticut, and it had

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Speaker 1: a very special place I'm assuming when you were growing

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Speaker 1: up as well, because the drinking age in Connecticut was

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Speaker 1: twenty one and the drinking age in New York was eighteen,

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Speaker 1: and port Chester was the first town over the border,

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Speaker 1: so it was filled with kids from Connecticut like crashing

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Speaker 1: their cars and getting STDs. Um so I got a

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Speaker 1: job djaying at a bar right by the Port Chester

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Speaker 1: train station on Monday nights for twenty five dollars a night,

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Speaker 1: so I was working for six hours. No one was

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Speaker 1: there except like a couple of like bottomed out methodone

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Speaker 1: addicts and what would you play? I didn't even have

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Speaker 1: that many records, so I'd play the same things over

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Speaker 1: and over again. So it was the Clash and Joy

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Speaker 1: Division and some early New Order records and Hank Williams

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Speaker 1: and Johnny Cash basically like whatever records I had access to. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so you did that, You went back to college, and

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Speaker 1: you're at Sony Purchase. At one point you say, I'm

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Speaker 1: done with school. I just because d jaying. I started djaying.

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Speaker 1: Time passed and I got a job djaying in New York,

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Speaker 1: and I realized, oh, a little bit slower. How did

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Speaker 1: you get a job dj in the city. Well, because

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Speaker 1: you know Saturday Night Fever, of course, And Saturday Fever

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Speaker 1: is a fascinating movie if you haven't seen it recently.

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Speaker 1: It's unrelenting, lee dark like. It's how that became like

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Speaker 1: a pop culture phenomena. I have no idea because it's

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Speaker 1: super bleak things. That was based on an article by

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Speaker 1: Nick Cone in New York magazine and he was on Deadline.

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Speaker 1: He completely made it up. It wasn't true whatsoever. Although

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Speaker 1: a great article in a great movie, and but it's about,

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Speaker 1: you know, these kids in Brooklyn and Queens who just

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Speaker 1: longed to get to Manhattan. But that existed not just

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Speaker 1: in Brooklyn, Queens, but in Long Island, Connecticut, New Jersey,

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Speaker 1: upstate New York. Like if you lived within the sort

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Speaker 1: of periphery of Manhattan, all you wanted to do was

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Speaker 1: go to Manhattan to hang out, to work, to live.

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Speaker 1: At least that was the case with me. So in

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Speaker 1: the late eighties, I started dropping off demo tapes at

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Speaker 1: different nightclubs in New York and rejected everywhere. And I

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Speaker 1: started giving demo tapes to ray EO stations like Kiss

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Speaker 1: and BLS same thing, I mean, like a skinny a

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Speaker 1: little bit slower. They would be others. People's material to

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Speaker 1: the radio was material that you had created. Both. I

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Speaker 1: would drop off these cassettes that had like a hip

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Speaker 1: hop mix, a house music mix, and my own music.

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Speaker 1: And I also sent it to tons of labels and

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Speaker 1: I got one response from Hollywood Records, the Peter Paterno

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Speaker 1: and this is and I got a letter from Hollywood

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Speaker 1: Records so clearly, and it said we do not accept

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Speaker 1: unsolicited Yeah, we'll take a quick break and come back

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Speaker 1: with more of my conversation with Moby, recorded at usc

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Speaker 1: as part of the l A Times Festival of Books.

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Speaker 1: This week we're talking to DJ Moby. Last week we

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Speaker 1: had Chev Gordon supermnch For that, we had job Is

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Speaker 1: Martin and Shirley Manson and so many other people. You

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Speaker 1: gotta go back into the archives. You haven't heard these things,

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Speaker 1: so download from tune in the Apple podcast or your

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Speaker 1: podcast player of choice. Okay, let's get back to my

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Speaker 1: conversation with Moby in front of a live studio audience. Okay,

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Speaker 1: but a little bit slower. When did you start to

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Speaker 1: record your own music? In early eighties? I stole a

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Speaker 1: four track from the A V Department at my high school.

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Speaker 1: I gave it back, so okay. I bought the real

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Speaker 1: like a like a Fostex, very very like school had

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Speaker 1: a FoST that's amazing, task camera Fostex. Well they were

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Speaker 1: two fostests. Was first intend to task cam, but people

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Speaker 1: were buying them. They certainly didn't. I did not go

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Speaker 1: to a low rent school, but we didn't have that

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Speaker 1: kind of equipment. Yeah, somehow. Well. I was also in

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Speaker 1: the like when like if you watch family Guy, the

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Speaker 1: nerdiest guy, it always has a hat that says A V.

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Speaker 1: We were. I was in the A V Department, you know,

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Speaker 1: like wheeling the film strip, you know, the overhead projector

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Speaker 1: to classes and setting it up up and make sure

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Speaker 1: it's clean. And I would eat my lunch in a

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Speaker 1: closet in the A V department, not get like, I

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Speaker 1: put joy Division on my walkman and eat my peanut

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Speaker 1: butter and jelly sandwich in a closet And it was great.

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Speaker 1: But where were we? The fas? But for those people

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Speaker 1: don't know, it was a real breakthrough because there are

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Speaker 1: four trucks on a cassette and the fast Tex was

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Speaker 1: the first machine that allowed you to seek up and

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Speaker 1: record on all four trucks, which was a huge break

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Speaker 1: It was egalitary, relatively egalitarian multitrack technology. And remember the

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Speaker 1: first time I turned it on and used it. Because

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Speaker 1: I had a matel drum machine. Mattel made a drum

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Speaker 1: machine called the Simsonics. I forgot that and so I

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Speaker 1: had my Mattel Simsonics drum machine. My borrowed face text

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Speaker 1: a guitar and a microphone that I also sort of

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Speaker 1: borrowed from the A V. Department, and I was able

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Speaker 1: to make music on my own and it was, you know,

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Speaker 1: like the scales fell from my eyes and suddenly, you know,

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Speaker 1: I was like I could I don't need to wait

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Speaker 1: around for other musician, Like, can just do this by myself?

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Speaker 1: So yes, of the late eighties. Okay, So when you're

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Speaker 1: making music at first, what kind of music are you making? Uh,

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Speaker 1: A little bit of everything, sort of inspired by some

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Speaker 1: of the singer songwriter like Roddy Frame from ast at Camera,

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Speaker 1: The Smith's The Cure, but also electronic music, you know,

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Speaker 1: inspired craftwork by craftwork. Um. The demo tape that I

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Speaker 1: got sent around they got rejected was actually my singer

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Speaker 1: songwriter stuff, so it wasn't retrospect. How good was no?

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Speaker 1: This is great, raving great back and forth in retrospect?

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Speaker 1: How good was that stuff? Oh? Totally mediocre? Because that's

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Speaker 1: one of the things people send you stuff Originally they

400
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Speaker 1: think it's so great, and if they have to make it,

401
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Speaker 1: they look back. Maybe I didn't deserve to make it

402
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Speaker 1: at that point. Well, then I had this sort of

403
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Speaker 1: like that, like the Robert Frost moment Two Paths Diverge

404
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Speaker 1: and the Wood And I was playing demos to my

405
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Speaker 1: girlfriend and a friend of hers, and I was playing

406
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Speaker 1: my very earnest singer songwriter music and they were like, yeah,

407
00:23:06,480 --> 00:23:08,399
Speaker 1: that's okay. And then I was like, oh, but I've

408
00:23:08,440 --> 00:23:11,639
Speaker 1: also started making electronic music. And I played it for

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Speaker 1: them and they stood up and started dancing wow. And

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Speaker 1: at that moment, I was like, the audience has spoken, Like,

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Speaker 1: I guess I'm not supposed to be the next Morrissey.

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Speaker 1: I'm supposed to make electronic music. Okay. While you're making music,

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Speaker 1: you talk about soliciting gigs in New York City, Yeah,

414
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Speaker 1: so tell us more about that. So it's constantly sneaking

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Speaker 1: into New York on Metro North, like hiding in the

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Speaker 1: bathroom on Metro North with a bag full of demo tapes,

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Speaker 1: jumping turnstiles, getting cheap food at Dojo remember Dojo um,

418
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Speaker 1: and bringing demo tapes everywhere, every record label, every radio station,

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Speaker 1: you know, waiting outside w n y U and the

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Speaker 1: hope that maybe someone who worked at w n y

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Speaker 1: U would like be willing to take a tape. And

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Speaker 1: I dropped off tapes at every nightclub, every bar. And

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Speaker 1: then there was this one club opening called Mars, and

424
00:24:02,680 --> 00:24:05,240
Speaker 1: it was on the West Side Highway in the Meatpacking District.

425
00:24:05,320 --> 00:24:07,879
Speaker 1: And this was back when the meatpacking district was the

426
00:24:07,920 --> 00:24:11,719
Speaker 1: meat packing District. Like they were like dead lamb carcasses

427
00:24:11,720 --> 00:24:17,680
Speaker 1: on the street and blood everywhere and prostitutes servicing all

428
00:24:17,720 --> 00:24:19,679
Speaker 1: sorts of people out in the open, like it was

429
00:24:20,920 --> 00:24:23,760
Speaker 1: really post apocalyptic and grim. In the middle of it

430
00:24:23,800 --> 00:24:26,440
Speaker 1: was this huge nightclub, Mars, and I went there to

431
00:24:26,520 --> 00:24:29,680
Speaker 1: drop off a demo tape and the HR person laughed

432
00:24:29,720 --> 00:24:33,360
Speaker 1: at me because they were taking applications for like bus boy, janitor,

433
00:24:34,080 --> 00:24:36,960
Speaker 1: bar back, and I dropped off a demo tape. But

434
00:24:37,040 --> 00:24:41,080
Speaker 1: the guy hiring DJs had never hired DJs before, and

435
00:24:41,119 --> 00:24:43,480
Speaker 1: he wondered why no one had dropped off demo tapes.

436
00:24:43,880 --> 00:24:46,320
Speaker 1: So I got my job solely because I was the

437
00:24:46,359 --> 00:24:48,879
Speaker 1: only person to drop off a demo tape. Do you

438
00:24:48,880 --> 00:24:52,320
Speaker 1: remember what year that was? And so you started to

439
00:24:52,320 --> 00:24:54,840
Speaker 1: work there, how frequent work, first once a week, and

440
00:24:54,920 --> 00:24:57,520
Speaker 1: twice a week and three times a week, and then

441
00:24:58,880 --> 00:25:01,760
Speaker 1: um finally move back to New York and got this

442
00:25:02,040 --> 00:25:05,840
Speaker 1: apartment on fourteen and third with four other people. Okay,

443
00:25:06,280 --> 00:25:08,480
Speaker 1: what kind of music are you playing when you're working

444
00:25:08,520 --> 00:25:12,399
Speaker 1: at bars um mainly house music and hip hop, but

445
00:25:12,520 --> 00:25:14,600
Speaker 1: also some dance, all reggae, which is really big at

446
00:25:14,600 --> 00:25:17,960
Speaker 1: the time. And occasionally my boss his name was Yuki

447
00:25:18,400 --> 00:25:23,880
Speaker 1: and he was Japanese and he was really interesting and

448
00:25:23,960 --> 00:25:26,600
Speaker 1: he would ask me if I could play certain genres

449
00:25:26,640 --> 00:25:29,520
Speaker 1: of music, and I would always just say yes, you know,

450
00:25:29,560 --> 00:25:32,320
Speaker 1: like so you remember one time in particular, he called

451
00:25:32,320 --> 00:25:35,280
Speaker 1: me up and said, oh, We're having a rare groove

452
00:25:35,400 --> 00:25:37,399
Speaker 1: party on the roof. Can you play rare groove? And

453
00:25:37,400 --> 00:25:39,720
Speaker 1: I was like, of course I can. And then I

454
00:25:39,800 --> 00:25:41,359
Speaker 1: hung up the phone and I started calling people. I

455
00:25:41,400 --> 00:25:45,760
Speaker 1: was like, what is rare groove? And so the three

456
00:25:45,800 --> 00:25:47,600
Speaker 1: other people you're living with, how did you find them

457
00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:50,000
Speaker 1: and find the apartment. One is a friend of mine

458
00:25:50,040 --> 00:25:53,400
Speaker 1: from Connecticut who was an artist named Damien loeb Uh.

459
00:25:53,960 --> 00:25:57,680
Speaker 1: Then he was dating a model named Ann And then

460
00:25:57,760 --> 00:26:01,240
Speaker 1: there's another DJ named Adrian came a very successful hip

461
00:26:01,280 --> 00:26:04,879
Speaker 1: hop DJ named Stretch Armstrong uh. And then my friend

462
00:26:04,960 --> 00:26:09,000
Speaker 1: Lee also it's just an artist from New York who

463
00:26:09,080 --> 00:26:11,600
Speaker 1: now owns an art gallery in Connecticut. Okay, so you're

464
00:26:11,600 --> 00:26:14,359
Speaker 1: working at Mars. Ultimately, many nights a week. Based on

465
00:26:14,400 --> 00:26:16,560
Speaker 1: the story you've just told, you're so obviously hustling your

466
00:26:16,560 --> 00:26:23,280
Speaker 1: demo tapes. Oh yeah. And then finally, this, finally, the

467
00:26:23,359 --> 00:26:27,560
Speaker 1: moment came. I dropped off demo tapes everywhere and I

468
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:30,840
Speaker 1: was DJing at Mars and this guy named Jared Hoffman

469
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:33,479
Speaker 1: came to the DJ booth and he asked me a question.

470
00:26:33,520 --> 00:26:35,520
Speaker 1: He said, well, do you make your own music? And

471
00:26:35,560 --> 00:26:38,120
Speaker 1: I said, as a matter of fact, I do. So

472
00:26:38,320 --> 00:26:40,360
Speaker 1: the next day I went to his apartment on fourteenth

473
00:26:40,400 --> 00:26:42,280
Speaker 1: and seven and I gave him a demo tape of

474
00:26:42,359 --> 00:26:45,200
Speaker 1: my own music, and he called me up and he said,

475
00:26:45,400 --> 00:26:48,400
Speaker 1: we would like to sign you to an artist contract

476
00:26:48,440 --> 00:26:53,040
Speaker 1: to our record label called Instinct Records. Put it in perspective,

477
00:26:53,800 --> 00:26:56,640
Speaker 1: at that time, they actually didn't have a name, they

478
00:26:56,640 --> 00:26:59,920
Speaker 1: didn't have an office, they'd never made records, they had

479
00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:02,679
Speaker 1: no employees. It was an idea that he and a

480
00:27:02,720 --> 00:27:05,560
Speaker 1: friend of his head. So so I was signed to

481
00:27:05,560 --> 00:27:08,560
Speaker 1: a record label that at the time wasn't how to

482
00:27:08,600 --> 00:27:12,159
Speaker 1: take you to figure that out. I kind of just

483
00:27:12,280 --> 00:27:15,440
Speaker 1: ignored that fact because someone had offered me a contract

484
00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:18,920
Speaker 1: like I and I never in my wild dreams thought

485
00:27:18,920 --> 00:27:21,720
Speaker 1: I would sign a recording contract, even if it wasn't

486
00:27:21,760 --> 00:27:25,200
Speaker 1: technically with a record label. Here for a second, when

487
00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:28,159
Speaker 1: you're djaying, are you d jaying under the name Moby?

488
00:27:28,480 --> 00:27:31,240
Speaker 1: You can call Moby since I was born my legal

489
00:27:31,320 --> 00:27:34,280
Speaker 1: name is Richard Melville Hall. So in school, you never rich,

490
00:27:34,320 --> 00:27:38,639
Speaker 1: You're never Rick, You're always Moby. Yeah, okay, So you

491
00:27:38,760 --> 00:27:41,359
Speaker 1: make this, you sign this record deal. They don't know

492
00:27:41,400 --> 00:27:44,160
Speaker 1: what they're doing. Do you actually make a record? Then

493
00:27:45,400 --> 00:27:48,240
Speaker 1: we take six months to make my first twelve inch

494
00:27:48,720 --> 00:27:53,359
Speaker 1: called Time's Up, oddly prescient for the Times Up movement

495
00:27:53,760 --> 00:27:58,240
Speaker 1: um because during this although I guess I can't in

496
00:27:58,280 --> 00:28:01,040
Speaker 1: any way late claim to it as assist endered heterosexual

497
00:28:01,080 --> 00:28:05,800
Speaker 1: white man, but nonetheless, uh. And that record did nothing.

498
00:28:06,080 --> 00:28:10,240
Speaker 1: I just disappeared. And then I made my second record

499
00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:13,760
Speaker 1: under my own name, which came out and sold about

500
00:28:13,760 --> 00:28:17,239
Speaker 1: a thousand copies. Which in high school I had been

501
00:28:17,240 --> 00:28:19,399
Speaker 1: in a punk rock band called the Vatican Commandos, and

502
00:28:19,440 --> 00:28:21,920
Speaker 1: we had a seven inch that sold two hundred copies,

503
00:28:22,320 --> 00:28:23,800
Speaker 1: And that amazed me because I meant there were two

504
00:28:23,880 --> 00:28:26,679
Speaker 1: hundred people who had heard the music we made. But

505
00:28:26,760 --> 00:28:29,520
Speaker 1: now there were a thousand people who heard the music

506
00:28:29,600 --> 00:28:31,840
Speaker 1: I had made, And I if my career had ended

507
00:28:31,840 --> 00:28:34,439
Speaker 1: in I would have been pretty happy. But then the

508
00:28:34,480 --> 00:28:37,640
Speaker 1: next single was a remix of the song Go, which

509
00:28:37,640 --> 00:28:40,520
Speaker 1: became a top ten record around Europe and around the

510
00:28:40,520 --> 00:28:42,840
Speaker 1: rest of the world. I think sold half a million copies. Okay,

511
00:28:42,840 --> 00:28:46,000
Speaker 1: but this is still with these two crazy guys. Yeah.

512
00:28:46,080 --> 00:28:49,760
Speaker 1: Now they had a label, they had Instinct, and they

513
00:28:49,800 --> 00:28:53,360
Speaker 1: didn't really have an office. They had Jared's apartment and

514
00:28:53,440 --> 00:28:55,400
Speaker 1: I was. I set up my equipment there, so I

515
00:28:55,480 --> 00:28:59,040
Speaker 1: ran the office like I would clean the kitchen, send faxes,

516
00:28:59,440 --> 00:29:03,960
Speaker 1: take wreck words to ups and the post off. Yeah,

517
00:29:04,280 --> 00:29:06,480
Speaker 1: like answering the phone like hello, Instinct records while I

518
00:29:06,560 --> 00:29:11,640
Speaker 1: was like hitting pause on my sequencer. Um, it was great.

519
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:15,840
Speaker 1: It was okay, joy full, joyful, happy time you may

520
00:29:15,960 --> 00:29:19,040
Speaker 1: go in your mind. Do you think it's a hit? No?

521
00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:23,120
Speaker 1: Absolutely not, because I was. I was a super weird,

522
00:29:23,160 --> 00:29:26,880
Speaker 1: obscure musician that no one had ever heard of, involved

523
00:29:26,880 --> 00:29:29,600
Speaker 1: in a genre techno that no one had heard of

524
00:29:29,720 --> 00:29:33,080
Speaker 1: or cared about. And I used music from Twin Peaks

525
00:29:33,120 --> 00:29:36,560
Speaker 1: and I was like, well, people know Twin Peaks, but no,

526
00:29:36,680 --> 00:29:39,640
Speaker 1: I didn't think anything was ever gonna happen. How did

527
00:29:39,680 --> 00:29:43,960
Speaker 1: it happen? It happened at the good Because this was

528
00:29:44,080 --> 00:29:47,360
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine or ninety the rave scene in the

529
00:29:47,480 --> 00:29:52,800
Speaker 1: UK was exploding and Twin Peaks was exploding, an interest

530
00:29:52,880 --> 00:29:57,480
Speaker 1: in New York dance music was exploding. So some influential

531
00:29:57,560 --> 00:30:01,080
Speaker 1: DJ's in the UK found this record and started playing

532
00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:03,720
Speaker 1: it and it just sort of metastasized in a very

533
00:30:03,720 --> 00:30:06,280
Speaker 1: good way. And what was that like being at the epicenter.

534
00:30:09,120 --> 00:30:12,600
Speaker 1: It's still possible that it didn't happen, you know, like

535
00:30:12,640 --> 00:30:16,160
Speaker 1: it's still possible that right, and that like that I'm

536
00:30:16,320 --> 00:30:21,320
Speaker 1: it's and I'm cleaning oatmeal bowls in the kitchen at

537
00:30:21,360 --> 00:30:25,640
Speaker 1: Instinct Records a K. Jared's apartment and somehow I'm having

538
00:30:25,680 --> 00:30:29,080
Speaker 1: a stroke or something or dissociative like Joan of Arc

539
00:30:29,120 --> 00:30:31,920
Speaker 1: style moment where like all of a sudden, like my

540
00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:35,160
Speaker 1: brain is like secreting still aside and naturally on its own.

541
00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:40,520
Speaker 1: And this is all a hallucination because the idea to

542
00:30:40,520 --> 00:30:44,240
Speaker 1: to go from selling a thousand records two then all

543
00:30:44,280 --> 00:30:46,920
Speaker 1: of a sudden, being on top of the pops multiple

544
00:30:46,960 --> 00:30:52,200
Speaker 1: times and traveling all around Europe and suddenly instead of

545
00:30:52,240 --> 00:30:55,600
Speaker 1: standing on stage in front of thirty people on Lowerie's

546
00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:58,560
Speaker 1: side standing on stage in front of ten thousand people

547
00:30:59,360 --> 00:31:01,640
Speaker 1: who knew of the songs that I had made, and

548
00:31:03,280 --> 00:31:11,160
Speaker 1: I it was wonderful, but so disconcerting. Disconcerting and what

549
00:31:11,200 --> 00:31:14,360
Speaker 1: was I've never expected it? Okay, But certainly when you

550
00:31:14,400 --> 00:31:17,240
Speaker 1: go from a club to a festival or a gig

551
00:31:17,240 --> 00:31:20,080
Speaker 1: of ten thousand people, you must add some level of

552
00:31:20,120 --> 00:31:23,760
Speaker 1: stage fright, fear, you know, authenticity figuring you know they're

553
00:31:23,920 --> 00:31:25,480
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go up and then people gonna say, what

554
00:31:25,520 --> 00:31:29,560
Speaker 1: the hell is this? Yeah, oddly enough the stage fright thing.

555
00:31:29,760 --> 00:31:34,360
Speaker 1: So my first ever real solo performance, and I think

556
00:31:34,400 --> 00:31:37,600
Speaker 1: you might appreciate certain aspects of this, was at the Palladium.

557
00:31:37,760 --> 00:31:41,080
Speaker 1: The Palladium was the coolest club in New York and

558
00:31:41,400 --> 00:31:43,520
Speaker 1: I had seen the Clash there, had seen Simple Minds

559
00:31:43,560 --> 00:31:46,560
Speaker 1: there and XTC. I've seen so many shows there. And

560
00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:50,520
Speaker 1: in nine or ninety I got asked to open up

561
00:31:50,520 --> 00:31:54,960
Speaker 1: for the band Snap. Remember Snap, I got the power

562
00:31:58,480 --> 00:32:03,120
Speaker 1: Um rhythm is a dance, sir. So Snap were huge.

563
00:32:03,320 --> 00:32:05,840
Speaker 1: The Power was the biggest song in the world. And

564
00:32:05,960 --> 00:32:09,000
Speaker 1: I somehow, I think the booking agent was dating a

565
00:32:09,040 --> 00:32:10,800
Speaker 1: friend of mine, and so I was going to open

566
00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:13,520
Speaker 1: up for Snap in front of thousands of people at

567
00:32:13,560 --> 00:32:17,560
Speaker 1: the Palladium. So I show up and I do my

568
00:32:17,640 --> 00:32:23,000
Speaker 1: sound check, and this is a lovely, odd little biographical detail.

569
00:32:23,120 --> 00:32:26,960
Speaker 1: The end of my sound check, I hear two people,

570
00:32:27,120 --> 00:32:29,480
Speaker 1: one person clapping, and I'm like, oh, someone's at my

571
00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:32,040
Speaker 1: sound check. And it was my boss, Yuki for Mars,

572
00:32:32,480 --> 00:32:34,880
Speaker 1: happened to be at the Palladium. And I walked out

573
00:32:34,920 --> 00:32:38,360
Speaker 1: to say hi, and there was this very small man

574
00:32:38,480 --> 00:32:42,040
Speaker 1: standing next to him and he said, Moby, meet Miles Davis.

575
00:32:43,760 --> 00:32:47,479
Speaker 1: So my first ever solo show was to two people,

576
00:32:47,560 --> 00:32:50,280
Speaker 1: one of whom was Miles Davis. You quit that too,

577
00:32:50,840 --> 00:32:52,320
Speaker 1: And he wouldn't shake my hand, but he was wearing

578
00:32:52,320 --> 00:32:57,360
Speaker 1: a beautiful suit. And and then ten o'clock rolls around.

579
00:32:58,040 --> 00:33:01,800
Speaker 1: The palladium is filled with bowl and the booking agent

580
00:33:01,880 --> 00:33:04,720
Speaker 1: comes to me and says, oh, bad news Snap didn't

581
00:33:04,760 --> 00:33:10,440
Speaker 1: make their flight, but you can go play. So I

582
00:33:10,560 --> 00:33:13,840
Speaker 1: walk on stage and the m C says, ladies and gentlemen,

583
00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:21,080
Speaker 1: bad news Snap aren't here, but from New York. Moby.

584
00:33:21,240 --> 00:33:23,640
Speaker 1: I hadn't made a record this point. People are booing

585
00:33:23,680 --> 00:33:26,280
Speaker 1: and throwing things, and I walk over to my equipment

586
00:33:26,360 --> 00:33:30,360
Speaker 1: and someone had unplugged it, and so I spent three

587
00:33:30,440 --> 00:33:34,280
Speaker 1: or four minutes in front of five thousand people plugging

588
00:33:34,280 --> 00:33:39,640
Speaker 1: in my equipment and rebooting discs, and they were booing.

589
00:33:39,720 --> 00:33:42,680
Speaker 1: And then when it was finally done and the first

590
00:33:42,720 --> 00:33:45,760
Speaker 1: song started, I was like, oh, I don't care. Like

591
00:33:45,800 --> 00:33:48,320
Speaker 1: I was like, this is the worst experience, this is

592
00:33:48,360 --> 00:33:50,880
Speaker 1: like such a nightmare experience. But I went through it,

593
00:33:51,480 --> 00:33:53,920
Speaker 1: you know, I was like, you were still again. By

594
00:33:53,960 --> 00:33:55,680
Speaker 1: the end of it, they were actually kind of with me.

595
00:33:55,760 --> 00:33:59,680
Speaker 1: And I realized that one thing that can serve for

596
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:03,520
Speaker 1: armers really well is having a degree of contempt for

597
00:34:03,560 --> 00:34:07,320
Speaker 1: your audience where you can love them fascinating. I love

598
00:34:07,400 --> 00:34:09,880
Speaker 1: that where you can love them but you don't really

599
00:34:09,920 --> 00:34:12,359
Speaker 1: care if they love you in return. And that's when

600
00:34:12,400 --> 00:34:15,040
Speaker 1: you can just perform as opposed to like being some

601
00:34:15,160 --> 00:34:17,080
Speaker 1: like lap dog sick of fans, like saying like, oh

602
00:34:17,120 --> 00:34:19,040
Speaker 1: please love me, just being like, if you love me,

603
00:34:19,160 --> 00:34:22,040
Speaker 1: that's fine. If not, that's fine too, Okay. From the

604
00:34:22,040 --> 00:34:24,080
Speaker 1: Giggots Palladium, how do you end up on top of

605
00:34:24,160 --> 00:34:27,520
Speaker 1: the Pops? And in Europe? Just put that song go

606
00:34:28,360 --> 00:34:30,480
Speaker 1: with the Twin Peaks music on it, and it just

607
00:34:30,560 --> 00:34:33,080
Speaker 1: kept going and then all of a sudden, the rave

608
00:34:33,160 --> 00:34:36,160
Speaker 1: scene blew up in the United States. And at that point,

609
00:34:36,640 --> 00:34:40,560
Speaker 1: as you know, a lot of the rave producers were

610
00:34:40,800 --> 00:34:43,880
Speaker 1: very faceless. You know, they would give themselves alter egos

611
00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:46,840
Speaker 1: and they wouldn't perform. And I was one of the

612
00:34:46,840 --> 00:34:49,399
Speaker 1: only people with a face. And I guess technically they

613
00:34:49,440 --> 00:34:52,440
Speaker 1: all had faces, they just chose not to show them.

614
00:34:52,520 --> 00:34:55,960
Speaker 1: And so I started being on the cover of magazines.

615
00:34:56,120 --> 00:35:00,920
Speaker 1: And there weren't that many public figure tech no producers

616
00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:04,080
Speaker 1: in the United States. They were really a handful. And

617
00:35:04,120 --> 00:35:06,799
Speaker 1: I kept touring and touring and touring and touring with

618
00:35:06,840 --> 00:35:09,120
Speaker 1: the Prodigy and with the Shaman, you remember the band

619
00:35:09,160 --> 00:35:13,480
Speaker 1: and the Shaman, and and I just toured and toured

620
00:35:13,600 --> 00:35:17,520
Speaker 1: and toured like old school Chitland circuit style, like just

621
00:35:17,600 --> 00:35:20,759
Speaker 1: me and a keyboard, okay, a couple of things. Were

622
00:35:20,800 --> 00:35:25,200
Speaker 1: you making any money? I remember I got I played

623
00:35:25,239 --> 00:35:27,080
Speaker 1: one show in the UK and I got paid six

624
00:35:27,160 --> 00:35:29,640
Speaker 1: hundred dollars and I was like, I just got paid

625
00:35:29,719 --> 00:35:32,560
Speaker 1: six hundred dollars. Like I was at that time, I

626
00:35:32,600 --> 00:35:35,160
Speaker 1: was being paid a hundred dollars to DJ, and I

627
00:35:35,239 --> 00:35:38,239
Speaker 1: was like, wow, I just got paid six nights of

628
00:35:38,360 --> 00:35:44,160
Speaker 1: djaying in one night. So up until about two that

629
00:35:44,320 --> 00:35:46,680
Speaker 1: was the most I've ever made. And in retrospect, were

630
00:35:46,680 --> 00:35:49,480
Speaker 1: you being ripped off or that was absolute? Now, when

631
00:35:49,520 --> 00:35:54,200
Speaker 1: I think of like, like Martin Garrick's, I like Martin Garrick's.

632
00:35:54,239 --> 00:35:57,440
Speaker 1: I really like that Animal song quite a lot. A

633
00:35:57,480 --> 00:36:00,520
Speaker 1: young techno producer puts out one song. Six months later,

634
00:36:00,520 --> 00:36:02,120
Speaker 1: he has a private plane and he's getting paid a

635
00:36:02,200 --> 00:36:05,279
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty And I was like, oh, I had

636
00:36:05,320 --> 00:36:07,000
Speaker 1: a top ten single and I was getting paid six

637
00:36:07,080 --> 00:36:09,799
Speaker 1: hundred dollars and I clearly someone else was making a

638
00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:12,799
Speaker 1: lot of money. You're a pro janitor, and at this

639
00:36:12,840 --> 00:36:15,720
Speaker 1: point the act was solely you on stage with little

640
00:36:15,760 --> 00:36:19,719
Speaker 1: octoped and little Yamaha keyboard and a microphone that I

641
00:36:19,719 --> 00:36:23,120
Speaker 1: would yell into being an old punk rocker. Now is

642
00:36:23,160 --> 00:36:27,080
Speaker 1: it okay? And you're traveling? How does the record label

643
00:36:27,160 --> 00:36:32,279
Speaker 1: situation work? Eventually I left instinct because they were they

644
00:36:32,440 --> 00:36:36,920
Speaker 1: as often happens like structurally, they were quite small and

645
00:36:37,080 --> 00:36:39,760
Speaker 1: things were going well for me. So then I signed

646
00:36:39,800 --> 00:36:42,200
Speaker 1: with Mute Records and Electra. So it was with Bob

647
00:36:42,239 --> 00:36:46,480
Speaker 1: Krasnow in Electra here in the States and Daniel Miller

648
00:36:46,480 --> 00:36:50,680
Speaker 1: and Mute everywhere else. And did that work for you? Yeah?

649
00:36:50,760 --> 00:36:53,560
Speaker 1: I mean Daniel Miller and Mute Records, you know, you know,

650
00:36:53,800 --> 00:36:59,640
Speaker 1: Mute Records like Depeche Mode, Nick cave Um, goldfrapp Et, cetera,

651
00:36:59,719 --> 00:37:01,960
Speaker 1: on and on and on, like an amazing, amazing label.

652
00:37:02,640 --> 00:37:06,360
Speaker 1: Daniel has never dropped an artist. So what I signed

653
00:37:06,360 --> 00:37:08,799
Speaker 1: with Mute, I was like, I I'm set, like I

654
00:37:08,800 --> 00:37:10,600
Speaker 1: can do anything, and I know he's never going to

655
00:37:10,680 --> 00:37:13,719
Speaker 1: drop me because he's never dropped an artist. Electra, on

656
00:37:13,760 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 1: the other hand, I think they signed me thinking, oh,

657
00:37:18,239 --> 00:37:21,040
Speaker 1: he's going to be our techno wonder kins, like, you know,

658
00:37:21,080 --> 00:37:23,520
Speaker 1: there's this whole genre of music and he's going to

659
00:37:23,600 --> 00:37:25,720
Speaker 1: be the progenitor of it and we're gonna sell millions

660
00:37:25,760 --> 00:37:31,360
Speaker 1: of records. And that never happened. And so I became

661
00:37:31,800 --> 00:37:35,799
Speaker 1: sort of the bastard step child at Electra, understandably because

662
00:37:35,800 --> 00:37:41,840
Speaker 1: I wasn't selling records. But like as a record company person, Okay,

663
00:37:41,880 --> 00:37:43,880
Speaker 1: I don't mean that in a bad way. As a

664
00:37:44,120 --> 00:37:45,759
Speaker 1: I never really worked at a record companies, you don't

665
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:47,520
Speaker 1: have to worry about offending as someone who has a

666
00:37:47,520 --> 00:37:52,080
Speaker 1: lot of experience around record companies. In I put out

667
00:37:52,080 --> 00:37:56,440
Speaker 1: an album called Everything Is Wrong, and Spin magazine that

668
00:37:56,640 --> 00:37:59,680
Speaker 1: autumn three or four months after it came out, said

669
00:37:59,719 --> 00:38:01,160
Speaker 1: this is going to be our album of the year.

670
00:38:01,760 --> 00:38:04,920
Speaker 1: We went to Electra and said, guess what. Spin at

671
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:08,560
Speaker 1: the time was a real magazine with paper and everything,

672
00:38:09,239 --> 00:38:11,359
Speaker 1: and we went to them and said, Wow, it's going

673
00:38:11,400 --> 00:38:14,320
Speaker 1: to be the album of the year. And the response

674
00:38:14,360 --> 00:38:17,120
Speaker 1: from Electra was like, oh, sorry, it's already a catalog item.

675
00:38:17,120 --> 00:38:22,880
Speaker 1: There's nothing we can do. And did it fail accordingly? Yeah, okay.

676
00:38:23,160 --> 00:38:26,000
Speaker 1: So at this point in time, for most of the nineties,

677
00:38:26,440 --> 00:38:29,880
Speaker 1: you're putting up music with Mutant Electra and you're touring.

678
00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:32,840
Speaker 1: What kind of audience are especially where this music is

679
00:38:32,880 --> 00:38:36,480
Speaker 1: prominent in the UK and the continent. What kind of

680
00:38:36,800 --> 00:38:40,520
Speaker 1: gigs are you doing? Um? Clubs and raids every now

681
00:38:40,560 --> 00:38:43,040
Speaker 1: and then I would do a solo show, but that

682
00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:46,759
Speaker 1: up until the mid nineties, the solo shows didn't make

683
00:38:46,800 --> 00:38:52,240
Speaker 1: sense because like that genre of electronic dance music, people

684
00:38:52,320 --> 00:38:57,279
Speaker 1: wanted big events, you know, and so you'd played ten

685
00:38:57,360 --> 00:38:59,840
Speaker 1: thousand people and if I did a solo show on

686
00:39:00,239 --> 00:39:06,400
Speaker 1: people hundred and fifty people. Um, and yeah. I remember

687
00:39:06,800 --> 00:39:09,920
Speaker 1: because when I this album everything is wrong. I did

688
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:13,680
Speaker 1: a solo tour and in some places we sold like

689
00:39:13,840 --> 00:39:15,920
Speaker 1: three d tickets and I was like, I can't believe

690
00:39:15,960 --> 00:39:20,239
Speaker 1: that's like three hundred people coming out to just see me, Like,

691
00:39:20,280 --> 00:39:22,040
Speaker 1: I'm not part of a rave I'm not on tour

692
00:39:22,120 --> 00:39:25,600
Speaker 1: with thirty other people. So that was really exciting. And

693
00:39:25,880 --> 00:39:29,359
Speaker 1: are you getting frustrated because you're queer is at this

694
00:39:29,440 --> 00:39:31,920
Speaker 1: level or you still believe there's something beyond or is

695
00:39:31,960 --> 00:39:35,200
Speaker 1: just beyond your wildest dreams? So I mentioned earlier my

696
00:39:35,239 --> 00:39:38,040
Speaker 1: high school punk rock band, The Vatican Commandos sold two

697
00:39:38,120 --> 00:39:41,719
Speaker 1: hundred copies of a seven inch Everything beyond that has

698
00:39:41,760 --> 00:39:45,680
Speaker 1: been unimaginable success. Okay, but at one point you get

699
00:39:45,680 --> 00:39:48,920
Speaker 1: frustrated and to change your sound. Well then, then in

700
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:52,319
Speaker 1: the late nineties, I decided to make a punk rock

701
00:39:52,360 --> 00:39:55,440
Speaker 1: record because I think, like the artists you and I

702
00:39:55,480 --> 00:39:58,759
Speaker 1: grew up revering. I thought that part of being a

703
00:39:58,840 --> 00:40:02,600
Speaker 1: musician was to experiment and take chances, and to be

704
00:40:02,719 --> 00:40:05,440
Speaker 1: lou Reid making metal machine music, to be the Beatles

705
00:40:05,480 --> 00:40:08,040
Speaker 1: and making Revolution number nine, to be David Bowie and

706
00:40:08,080 --> 00:40:12,120
Speaker 1: go from like the Laughing Gnome to a Philadelphia disco artist.

707
00:40:12,239 --> 00:40:15,279
Speaker 1: Like I thought that's what musicians did. So I made

708
00:40:15,320 --> 00:40:18,920
Speaker 1: this very dark punk rock record because I thought it

709
00:40:18,960 --> 00:40:21,160
Speaker 1: was part of the job description of being a musician

710
00:40:21,200 --> 00:40:26,840
Speaker 1: to experiment, and it got crucified, like I got. Everyone

711
00:40:26,880 --> 00:40:30,840
Speaker 1: hated it except for a few people. Bono told me

712
00:40:30,880 --> 00:40:33,920
Speaker 1: he liked it as much as the First Class album.

713
00:40:34,040 --> 00:40:36,920
Speaker 1: Um Axel Rose, who now hates me, told me that

714
00:40:36,920 --> 00:40:39,080
Speaker 1: he would listen to it on repeat while driving around

715
00:40:39,160 --> 00:40:43,200
Speaker 1: l A. But the best is I got one piece

716
00:40:43,239 --> 00:40:49,040
Speaker 1: of fan mail from Terence Trent Darby on Tarrent Trent

717
00:40:49,200 --> 00:40:53,040
Speaker 1: Darby Purple Stationary telling me how much he liked the record.

718
00:40:53,160 --> 00:40:55,759
Speaker 1: So the three of them liked it. Okay, so the

719
00:40:55,840 --> 00:40:58,840
Speaker 1: motivation was just about expanding your horizons. I just, I

720
00:40:58,920 --> 00:41:01,920
Speaker 1: just I been making electronic music and I really missed

721
00:41:01,920 --> 00:41:06,440
Speaker 1: playing guitar and screaming. And then after the reaction, generally

722
00:41:06,440 --> 00:41:10,040
Speaker 1: speaking is negative. What headspace does that leave you? Well,

723
00:41:10,080 --> 00:41:12,360
Speaker 1: it was a very dark time because I've been sober

724
00:41:12,400 --> 00:41:15,800
Speaker 1: for eight years and then I started drinking again, started

725
00:41:15,880 --> 00:41:18,879
Speaker 1: dating a lot of professional sex workers, as you do,

726
00:41:19,600 --> 00:41:22,320
Speaker 1: um my mom, when are we talking about literally professional

727
00:41:22,320 --> 00:41:25,720
Speaker 1: sex workers. We're talking about people in the nightlife sphere

728
00:41:26,160 --> 00:41:31,200
Speaker 1: who live that lifestyle, people who would get paid to

729
00:41:31,280 --> 00:41:36,680
Speaker 1: have sex. Okay, what do we call that dating? Well,

730
00:41:36,920 --> 00:41:39,680
Speaker 1: I guess I Luckily I was not a customer. I

731
00:41:39,719 --> 00:41:42,880
Speaker 1: was a boyfriend, you know. And then also like Dominatrix

732
00:41:42,960 --> 00:41:46,480
Speaker 1: is strippers, phone sex workers, you know. Now this is

733
00:41:46,520 --> 00:41:49,600
Speaker 1: a whole another aspect. I mean, for those of us

734
00:41:49,640 --> 00:41:51,560
Speaker 1: who haven't walked on the dark side of the street,

735
00:41:51,840 --> 00:41:54,040
Speaker 1: how do you find these people? You live in Lower

736
00:41:54,040 --> 00:41:57,520
Speaker 1: Manhattan in the nineties, Like, you know, it's like like

737
00:41:57,880 --> 00:42:02,080
Speaker 1: bagels and professional sex workers? Okay? Were these hookers were

738
00:42:02,080 --> 00:42:05,799
Speaker 1: the heart of gold? Were they just low class people? Uh? No,

739
00:42:05,920 --> 00:42:10,640
Speaker 1: they were what I found and m hmmm, sort of

740
00:42:10,680 --> 00:42:14,320
Speaker 1: like growing up really poor. I don't know. For some reason,

741
00:42:14,440 --> 00:42:18,759
Speaker 1: I've always been attracted to friends or dating people who

742
00:42:18,800 --> 00:42:22,200
Speaker 1: sort of wear their brokenness on their sleeve. You know,

743
00:42:22,400 --> 00:42:25,080
Speaker 1: did you try to fix them? There's a little holding

744
00:42:25,160 --> 00:42:27,600
Speaker 1: cau Field is um going on there? Yeah? Like, you know,

745
00:42:27,840 --> 00:42:30,960
Speaker 1: you stepped in these relationships with these broken people. They end,

746
00:42:31,000 --> 00:42:35,799
Speaker 1: how usually with me having panic attacks and running away? Really,

747
00:42:35,840 --> 00:42:39,040
Speaker 1: so do you still have panic attacks today? Only when

748
00:42:39,040 --> 00:42:42,000
Speaker 1: I try to get close to anyone. But apart from that,

749
00:42:42,040 --> 00:42:47,759
Speaker 1: I'm fine? Yeah? Is that really pano deck just a

750
00:42:47,800 --> 00:42:51,120
Speaker 1: fear of intimacy? Oh no, it's full on. So what

751
00:42:51,160 --> 00:42:54,959
Speaker 1: did the professionals say about that. The professionals say that

752
00:42:55,600 --> 00:42:59,200
Speaker 1: because I've seen quite a lot of them that I

753
00:42:59,280 --> 00:43:01,440
Speaker 1: have panic attack. I mean, I was part of a

754
00:43:01,480 --> 00:43:04,480
Speaker 1: study on panic attack suffers at Columbia. I've seen a

755
00:43:04,520 --> 00:43:07,600
Speaker 1: lot lots of therapists been medicated. It doesn't. But what

756
00:43:07,640 --> 00:43:09,960
Speaker 1: we know about panic, because I used to suffer from bags,

757
00:43:10,160 --> 00:43:13,400
Speaker 1: is if you wait long enough, the panic will evaporate. Yes,

758
00:43:13,760 --> 00:43:18,520
Speaker 1: which largely is true. Unfortunately, I was diagnosed to Columbia's

759
00:43:18,560 --> 00:43:21,200
Speaker 1: having a very unique type of panic disorder. It's called

760
00:43:21,239 --> 00:43:24,920
Speaker 1: plateaued panic disorder. I once had a panic attack that

761
00:43:25,040 --> 00:43:28,760
Speaker 1: lasted for six months. And I'm not kidding. It started

762
00:43:29,120 --> 00:43:31,520
Speaker 1: and it just when I went to sleep. I wasn't panicking,

763
00:43:31,520 --> 00:43:33,120
Speaker 1: but I'd wake up and it would come right back.

764
00:43:33,680 --> 00:43:36,279
Speaker 1: Every waking minute I'd go to sleep, wake up, it

765
00:43:36,320 --> 00:43:38,799
Speaker 1: would come right back. And it only started waning about

766
00:43:38,880 --> 00:43:43,560
Speaker 1: six months into it. And but you could sleep with yeah,

767
00:43:43,640 --> 00:43:47,719
Speaker 1: like I would pass out just through exhaustion. Okay, Then uh,

768
00:43:48,080 --> 00:43:50,320
Speaker 1: let's wind it back. You go through the dark period

769
00:43:50,400 --> 00:43:53,080
Speaker 1: subsequent to your punk rock record, and then what are

770
00:43:53,080 --> 00:43:55,120
Speaker 1: you the thoughts in your brain as far as moving forward?

771
00:43:55,360 --> 00:43:57,600
Speaker 1: So I make the punk rock cracker called animal rights

772
00:43:58,600 --> 00:44:02,840
Speaker 1: um starting again. My mom dies of lung cancer. I

773
00:44:02,920 --> 00:44:09,319
Speaker 1: lose that. Did your mother acknowledge and respect your success? Oh?

774
00:44:09,360 --> 00:44:13,799
Speaker 1: She loved it, She loved it. There's the most adorable

775
00:44:13,840 --> 00:44:16,440
Speaker 1: story is when I put out the album Everything is

776
00:44:16,480 --> 00:44:20,319
Speaker 1: Wrong on a major label, Electric Records. She took a

777
00:44:20,400 --> 00:44:23,920
Speaker 1: review to the editor of the Dairy En News Review

778
00:44:25,320 --> 00:44:27,880
Speaker 1: and she walked in the Dairy and News Review circulation

779
00:44:28,520 --> 00:44:32,160
Speaker 1: five ten, and she walked in. She said, my son

780
00:44:32,320 --> 00:44:35,600
Speaker 1: is a famous musician. You should write about him. Did

781
00:44:35,640 --> 00:44:38,239
Speaker 1: they eventually, like I think ten years later. Yeah, it

782
00:44:38,320 --> 00:44:40,839
Speaker 1: was a big deal. Like to an interview for day mother,

783
00:44:40,960 --> 00:44:44,080
Speaker 1: your father's dead, your mother's passage, you were now an orphan.

784
00:44:44,160 --> 00:44:46,359
Speaker 1: Do you have any other family that you had connection with?

785
00:44:48,000 --> 00:44:50,719
Speaker 1: Two aunts and uncles, some cousins who I love very much,

786
00:44:51,200 --> 00:44:57,640
Speaker 1: but against a little Russian literature. On my mom's deathbed,

787
00:44:57,719 --> 00:45:01,520
Speaker 1: she told me that I have a half brother somewhere, somewhere, somewhere.

788
00:45:01,800 --> 00:45:04,000
Speaker 1: She got pregnant in high school, had a child put

789
00:45:04,080 --> 00:45:06,200
Speaker 1: up for adoption, and I found out about this right

790
00:45:06,200 --> 00:45:08,719
Speaker 1: before she died. And if you found that person, no,

791
00:45:09,480 --> 00:45:15,080
Speaker 1: But fast forward to the year two thousand seven. Um

792
00:45:15,280 --> 00:45:18,759
Speaker 1: Uh Alexandra Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi's daughter, and I are in

793
00:45:18,880 --> 00:45:21,800
Speaker 1: d C. Hanging out with Nancy. At this point Nancy

794
00:45:21,880 --> 00:45:26,239
Speaker 1: Speaker of the House. Um, so she was surrounded. I mean,

795
00:45:26,280 --> 00:45:28,080
Speaker 1: she's third in line to the presidency, so it's a

796
00:45:28,680 --> 00:45:30,520
Speaker 1: she's a big deal, and he's always been a big deal.

797
00:45:30,800 --> 00:45:33,000
Speaker 1: But I got very drunk and I was talking to

798
00:45:33,040 --> 00:45:37,880
Speaker 1: a journalist from Politico and somehow this came up that

799
00:45:37,920 --> 00:45:39,759
Speaker 1: I have a half brother, and I joking, he said,

800
00:45:39,840 --> 00:45:45,279
Speaker 1: maybe it's Karl Rove and he then he wrote a

801
00:45:45,320 --> 00:45:49,960
Speaker 1: funny little piece our Mobi and Karl Rove brothers. Keep

802
00:45:49,960 --> 00:45:51,920
Speaker 1: minding if you don't. I told this story once and

803
00:45:51,960 --> 00:45:53,759
Speaker 1: the person was like, who's Karl Rove. I was like, oh,

804
00:45:53,800 --> 00:45:59,880
Speaker 1: that's right, you're young. Um so, so Karl Rove was.

805
00:46:00,280 --> 00:46:03,040
Speaker 1: He's the one essentially was the architect of the Bush

806
00:46:03,080 --> 00:46:06,680
Speaker 1: white House. And so two weeks after this article comes out,

807
00:46:06,719 --> 00:46:10,319
Speaker 1: I get a letter on White House stationary, handwritten and said,

808
00:46:10,400 --> 00:46:13,759
Speaker 1: I haven't memorized, dear Moby, or is that Mr Moby?

809
00:46:13,800 --> 00:46:18,680
Speaker 1: It's not me. For one thing, I am seventeen years

810
00:46:18,719 --> 00:46:21,160
Speaker 1: older than you, and I have no musical ability. Have

811
00:46:21,280 --> 00:46:24,400
Speaker 1: you considered James Carville as he's bald and plays the guitar.

812
00:46:27,120 --> 00:46:29,960
Speaker 1: I haven't framed in my bathroom your pal Karl Rove,

813
00:46:30,800 --> 00:46:34,360
Speaker 1: so of the three and a half billion men on

814
00:46:34,400 --> 00:46:36,960
Speaker 1: the planet, I know that Karl Rove is not my brother,

815
00:46:38,239 --> 00:46:45,360
Speaker 1: so you'll still be hunting. You're listening to my conversation

816
00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:48,880
Speaker 1: with Grammy nominated DJ Moby. We'll be back in a moment.

817
00:46:50,040 --> 00:46:52,120
Speaker 1: I hope you're enjoying listening to this episode of the

818
00:46:52,160 --> 00:46:54,960
Speaker 1: Bob Left Sets podcast. If you want to see videos

819
00:46:54,960 --> 00:46:57,359
Speaker 1: and photos of our guests, go to at tune in

820
00:46:57,440 --> 00:47:01,520
Speaker 1: on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Now more of Moby and

821
00:47:01,600 --> 00:47:03,680
Speaker 1: me in front of a live studio audience at the

822
00:47:03,800 --> 00:47:07,440
Speaker 1: l A Times Festival. Book on the Bob Left Sets podcast.

823
00:47:11,120 --> 00:47:13,960
Speaker 1: So in this dark period, how do you decide to

824
00:47:14,000 --> 00:47:16,520
Speaker 1: make music again? And what music do you then make? Well?

825
00:47:16,840 --> 00:47:19,920
Speaker 1: I was playing Glastonbury, do you know. Glastonbury's sort of

826
00:47:19,920 --> 00:47:22,000
Speaker 1: like one of the original biggest festivals in the world

827
00:47:22,480 --> 00:47:27,839
Speaker 1: and in the UK. And um, I was playing Glastonbury.

828
00:47:27,920 --> 00:47:30,279
Speaker 1: It was raining, it was muddy, and it was disgusting,

829
00:47:30,360 --> 00:47:32,680
Speaker 1: and they wanted me to play a dance music set

830
00:47:33,239 --> 00:47:35,480
Speaker 1: and I had and I this is after the Animal

831
00:47:35,560 --> 00:47:37,200
Speaker 1: Rights the rock record, and I wanted to make a

832
00:47:37,320 --> 00:47:40,120
Speaker 1: darker punk rock record. I was like, Animal Rights wasn't

833
00:47:40,239 --> 00:47:42,759
Speaker 1: dark enough. It was pretty dark, and I wanted to

834
00:47:42,800 --> 00:47:47,440
Speaker 1: make like a super like Sepultura inspired dark punk rock record.

835
00:47:47,719 --> 00:47:50,799
Speaker 1: And one of my managers said the simplest little thing.

836
00:47:51,080 --> 00:47:52,799
Speaker 1: He said, well you could do that, he said, but

837
00:47:52,840 --> 00:47:57,319
Speaker 1: you know, your electronic music makes people happy, and that

838
00:47:57,400 --> 00:48:01,200
Speaker 1: was what reached me. He didn't say you could sell more,

839
00:48:01,440 --> 00:48:03,440
Speaker 1: he didn't say it would be better for your career.

840
00:48:03,520 --> 00:48:05,720
Speaker 1: He said it makes people happy. And all of a sudden,

841
00:48:05,760 --> 00:48:08,239
Speaker 1: I thought like, oh, if I have the ability to

842
00:48:08,320 --> 00:48:10,480
Speaker 1: put music out into the world, why not try to

843
00:48:10,480 --> 00:48:14,200
Speaker 1: make people happy? And so then, um, I lost my

844
00:48:14,239 --> 00:48:16,800
Speaker 1: deal with Electra and I made the album Play thinking

845
00:48:16,800 --> 00:48:19,600
Speaker 1: it was going to be my last album. Okay, you

846
00:48:19,760 --> 00:48:21,680
Speaker 1: thought it was going to be your last album for

847
00:48:21,760 --> 00:48:24,799
Speaker 1: Elektra or his last album period period, because no one

848
00:48:24,880 --> 00:48:26,879
Speaker 1: was into I mean, I was such a has been

849
00:48:26,920 --> 00:48:31,319
Speaker 1: at this point, Like I was like, as has been

850
00:48:31,560 --> 00:48:34,000
Speaker 1: as it has been, could be. That record ultimately came

851
00:48:34,040 --> 00:48:37,600
Speaker 1: out in V two Richard Brimpson's and people. Yeah in

852
00:48:37,680 --> 00:48:41,279
Speaker 1: the US, um was the record done when they picked

853
00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:44,360
Speaker 1: it up? Yeah, one of the n r. People at

854
00:48:44,480 --> 00:48:48,279
Speaker 1: V two had heard somehow heard one of the songs

855
00:48:48,360 --> 00:48:52,239
Speaker 1: on NPR some college radio station upstate New York, and

856
00:48:52,280 --> 00:48:57,160
Speaker 1: they signed it for North America. Okay, a licensing deal,

857
00:48:57,160 --> 00:48:59,720
Speaker 1: which is great because now I own it again. Okay,

858
00:48:59,760 --> 00:49:04,200
Speaker 1: so the record you're making it, It had a number

859
00:49:04,239 --> 00:49:07,840
Speaker 1: of guests, spots, etcetera. For those looking at your career,

860
00:49:07,880 --> 00:49:10,879
Speaker 1: this would be a larger step of broater thing than

861
00:49:10,920 --> 00:49:14,560
Speaker 1: you would have done previously. Oh it was. I mean

862
00:49:14,600 --> 00:49:18,640
Speaker 1: everything about it is baffling. And made it on old,

863
00:49:18,760 --> 00:49:23,440
Speaker 1: broken equipment in my tiny little studio on Mott Street. UM.

864
00:49:23,520 --> 00:49:26,160
Speaker 1: Some of the songs are mixed onto cassette. There are

865
00:49:26,200 --> 00:49:28,720
Speaker 1: three songs on Play that are demos that were recorded

866
00:49:28,760 --> 00:49:33,960
Speaker 1: to cassette. UM. Made for a budget of exactly zero

867
00:49:34,040 --> 00:49:39,120
Speaker 1: dollars and released with no expectations Like I remember someone

868
00:49:39,200 --> 00:49:42,400
Speaker 1: at V two saying, you know what, we think Play

869
00:49:42,560 --> 00:49:45,800
Speaker 1: could sell fifty copies, and I was like, it was

870
00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:48,479
Speaker 1: m Richard Sanders, do you know Richard? Sir Richard said,

871
00:49:48,640 --> 00:49:50,640
Speaker 1: you know what, we actually have high hopes for Play.

872
00:49:50,680 --> 00:49:53,920
Speaker 1: We think it could sell fifty thousand copies. Fast forward

873
00:49:53,920 --> 00:49:58,440
Speaker 1: a year, it was selling two copies a week. With

874
00:49:59,360 --> 00:50:03,279
Speaker 1: that or alternately, that is not true and I am

875
00:50:03,320 --> 00:50:09,040
Speaker 1: just hallucinating somewhere and this is all okay, So you

876
00:50:09,120 --> 00:50:11,240
Speaker 1: make that record. There are a lot of legends about

877
00:50:11,280 --> 00:50:14,680
Speaker 1: that record. One that every track was licensed for commercials?

878
00:50:15,280 --> 00:50:18,279
Speaker 1: A is that literally true? Every track was licensed, but

879
00:50:18,360 --> 00:50:21,200
Speaker 1: a lot of the licenses were actually for like student

880
00:50:21,239 --> 00:50:24,399
Speaker 1: films because I'm tight, etcetera. So like there were a

881
00:50:24,400 --> 00:50:29,560
Speaker 1: lot of commercial licenses for which I was crucified over

882
00:50:29,600 --> 00:50:31,560
Speaker 1: and over and over and over and over once again

883
00:50:31,600 --> 00:50:35,880
Speaker 1: at the bleeding edge looking back at your career. Was

884
00:50:35,960 --> 00:50:38,799
Speaker 1: that your effort, the label's effort, the manager's effort. How

885
00:50:38,800 --> 00:50:44,280
Speaker 1: did those licenses come to first? Okay, so the album

886
00:50:44,320 --> 00:50:46,719
Speaker 1: Everything is wrong, I had it. There's a song on

887
00:50:46,760 --> 00:50:48,560
Speaker 1: They're called God Moving over the Face of the Water.

888
00:50:48,640 --> 00:50:52,040
Speaker 1: So it was used in Michael Man's Heat Thanks um.

889
00:50:52,320 --> 00:50:55,880
Speaker 1: Range Rover came to me and said, we want to

890
00:50:55,880 --> 00:50:58,120
Speaker 1: give you a hundred and fifty thou dollars to use

891
00:50:58,160 --> 00:51:00,759
Speaker 1: God Moving over the Face of the Waters in a

892
00:51:00,880 --> 00:51:05,080
Speaker 1: Range Rover commercial. My knee jerk reaction was to say,

893
00:51:05,160 --> 00:51:08,280
Speaker 1: fuck you, Range Rover. You know I'm an old punk rocker.

894
00:51:08,320 --> 00:51:11,440
Speaker 1: I don't even have a driver's license, like go funk yourself.

895
00:51:12,000 --> 00:51:15,560
Speaker 1: But then but then I thought, I was like, well,

896
00:51:15,560 --> 00:51:17,320
Speaker 1: if I go to if I go to Green Peace

897
00:51:17,960 --> 00:51:20,640
Speaker 1: and say I got offered a hundred and fifty thousand

898
00:51:20,719 --> 00:51:23,000
Speaker 1: dollars to license music to Range Rover, and I told

899
00:51:23,080 --> 00:51:25,319
Speaker 1: him to go funk themselves. Some my green piece would

900
00:51:25,320 --> 00:51:28,399
Speaker 1: say good for you. Or if I said, oh, here's

901
00:51:28,400 --> 00:51:30,680
Speaker 1: a check for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, they'd

902
00:51:30,680 --> 00:51:34,120
Speaker 1: be a lot happier. So I sort of decided to

903
00:51:34,280 --> 00:51:38,759
Speaker 1: enter this faustian robin hood slash bargain where I was like,

904
00:51:38,960 --> 00:51:42,279
Speaker 1: I will license my music as long as ultimately I

905
00:51:42,400 --> 00:51:46,400
Speaker 1: do good things with the money. All of the money

906
00:51:46,440 --> 00:51:49,239
Speaker 1: over time, yes, we look, yeah, absolutely over time. That

907
00:51:49,400 --> 00:51:51,719
Speaker 1: is the goal is to like any money that has

908
00:51:51,760 --> 00:51:55,320
Speaker 1: come in from licensing, I have to get rid of Wow.

909
00:51:55,880 --> 00:51:59,840
Speaker 1: So in any event, you're like, I also would like

910
00:51:59,880 --> 00:52:02,520
Speaker 1: to say in the early two thousands, I did forget

911
00:52:02,520 --> 00:52:06,880
Speaker 1: about that for a while, you know, so now trying

912
00:52:06,920 --> 00:52:10,239
Speaker 1: to like maya culpa makeup for it. Okay, but the

913
00:52:10,320 --> 00:52:14,319
Speaker 1: record is not an instant here. It's successful, but it's

914
00:52:14,360 --> 00:52:18,080
Speaker 1: not mega. I mean, it's old. Four thousand copies the

915
00:52:18,160 --> 00:52:21,160
Speaker 1: week it was released, and then two thousand copies the

916
00:52:21,200 --> 00:52:23,440
Speaker 1: next week and then a thousand copies the week after that,

917
00:52:23,520 --> 00:52:27,840
Speaker 1: And the licensing to your question was mainly done because

918
00:52:28,239 --> 00:52:31,839
Speaker 1: music supervisors were the only people interested, like k CRW

919
00:52:31,920 --> 00:52:35,239
Speaker 1: here and people who wanted to use the music and

920
00:52:35,320 --> 00:52:38,240
Speaker 1: TV shows where that was the only attention the record

921
00:52:38,320 --> 00:52:41,080
Speaker 1: was getting. So we just said yes. And what was

922
00:52:41,160 --> 00:52:43,719
Speaker 1: the turning point to breakthrough on the record that blew

923
00:52:43,760 --> 00:52:47,520
Speaker 1: it up? In your mind? The turning point was Danny

924
00:52:47,560 --> 00:52:50,920
Speaker 1: Boyle using porcelain in the movie The Beach, because The

925
00:52:50,920 --> 00:52:54,480
Speaker 1: Beach with Leo DiCaprio's first movie after Titanic, so everyone

926
00:52:54,480 --> 00:52:57,640
Speaker 1: went to see it and they used porcelain when they

927
00:52:57,680 --> 00:53:00,400
Speaker 1: get to the beach, when they get to the island,

928
00:53:00,480 --> 00:53:03,000
Speaker 1: and you could just sense like that was the moment

929
00:53:03,080 --> 00:53:05,920
Speaker 1: where like it went from being a weird, little underground

930
00:53:05,920 --> 00:53:09,600
Speaker 1: record to all of a sudden like being so much

931
00:53:09,640 --> 00:53:12,040
Speaker 1: bigger than that. And then you're tied up with Gwen Stefani,

932
00:53:12,120 --> 00:53:15,800
Speaker 1: You're all over MTV. What's it like being the either

933
00:53:15,880 --> 00:53:19,439
Speaker 1: hurricane on that? It was great because it was also

934
00:53:19,520 --> 00:53:22,400
Speaker 1: bad anthropologically baffling, because I thought this was going to

935
00:53:22,440 --> 00:53:23,960
Speaker 1: be my last record and I was going to move

936
00:53:24,000 --> 00:53:28,960
Speaker 1: back to Connecticut teach philosophy at community college, and you know,

937
00:53:29,680 --> 00:53:33,279
Speaker 1: being a loveless marriage, um and and and part of

938
00:53:33,280 --> 00:53:37,000
Speaker 1: the player and die. And then all of a sudden,

939
00:53:37,040 --> 00:53:39,920
Speaker 1: like there are movie stars coming to my concerts and

940
00:53:39,960 --> 00:53:42,120
Speaker 1: they want to date me, and I'm getting invited to

941
00:53:42,160 --> 00:53:47,360
Speaker 1: amazing parties and instead of playing too like the touring,

942
00:53:47,440 --> 00:53:50,279
Speaker 1: for example, in the UK, the first show that I

943
00:53:50,320 --> 00:53:52,200
Speaker 1: did was at a place called the Scala on the

944
00:53:52,200 --> 00:53:54,520
Speaker 1: Play tour and we sold four hundred tickets, which I

945
00:53:54,520 --> 00:53:59,040
Speaker 1: thought was great. The last show was selling out Wembley

946
00:53:59,080 --> 00:54:04,640
Speaker 1: and adding a show at Brixton Academy Stadium the Arenas,

947
00:54:04,680 --> 00:54:09,200
Speaker 1: which is like fifteen thousand. Um actually did end up

948
00:54:09,200 --> 00:54:14,480
Speaker 1: playing Wembley Stadium, but it's a much later and it

949
00:54:14,520 --> 00:54:16,560
Speaker 1: has not. It was I was playing a corporate event

950
00:54:16,600 --> 00:54:18,160
Speaker 1: and there were two hundred people there. And if you've

951
00:54:18,200 --> 00:54:21,400
Speaker 1: ever played two hundred people in a stadium that holds

952
00:54:21,440 --> 00:54:26,080
Speaker 1: sixty thousand, things are not working. These are these are

953
00:54:26,080 --> 00:54:27,960
Speaker 1: going up. You started off the playing the four hundred,

954
00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:32,200
Speaker 1: now you're playing the fifteen thousand, and what are you thinking.

955
00:54:33,000 --> 00:54:35,720
Speaker 1: I'm thinking that this is the answer to every problem

956
00:54:35,760 --> 00:54:39,839
Speaker 1: I've ever had, and you ultimately learned that it's not,

957
00:54:39,880 --> 00:54:41,520
Speaker 1: of course. Yeah, And then I was like, I was like,

958
00:54:42,080 --> 00:54:45,480
Speaker 1: I mean, I just finished writing memoir too, And there's

959
00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:50,760
Speaker 1: this one scene. I mean, I feel very narcissistic quoting myself,

960
00:54:50,960 --> 00:54:54,000
Speaker 1: but there's a scene where like I'm playing a concert

961
00:54:54,080 --> 00:54:55,760
Speaker 1: and I look over at the side of the stage

962
00:54:56,160 --> 00:54:59,440
Speaker 1: and there's like Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow Natalie Portman dancing

963
00:55:00,239 --> 00:55:04,920
Speaker 1: and and I imagine a conversation with myself, like me

964
00:55:05,040 --> 00:55:07,160
Speaker 1: with like the old eighteen year old punk rocker, and

965
00:55:07,160 --> 00:55:09,200
Speaker 1: the eighteen year old punk rocker is like, fuck you,

966
00:55:09,239 --> 00:55:12,480
Speaker 1: don't you know celebrity culture is facile and like you're

967
00:55:12,920 --> 00:55:17,239
Speaker 1: such a running dog, licks bittle accommodator to these paradigms

968
00:55:17,239 --> 00:55:19,879
Speaker 1: that you know are cheap and shitty. And I was like, yeah,

969
00:55:19,960 --> 00:55:24,799
Speaker 1: but they're being nice to me. It's like Howard Sterring today. Yeah,

970
00:55:24,960 --> 00:55:30,439
Speaker 1: so did you test the waters all of them? Yeah?

971
00:55:30,440 --> 00:55:33,799
Speaker 1: Of course? And what did you learn witch waters? I mean,

972
00:55:33,840 --> 00:55:37,000
Speaker 1: like the water. You know, you're saying the door opens up.

973
00:55:37,280 --> 00:55:41,600
Speaker 1: You're a recognizable character. You talk about not feeling good

974
00:55:41,600 --> 00:55:45,400
Speaker 1: about yourself and therefore dating sex workers. Suddenly iconic people

975
00:55:45,400 --> 00:55:48,200
Speaker 1: are interested in you. Was that something that you then

976
00:55:48,280 --> 00:55:51,040
Speaker 1: proceeded to date those people, of course, and what was

977
00:55:51,080 --> 00:55:56,680
Speaker 1: that like? Uh interesting? Because you Okay, So we live

978
00:55:56,719 --> 00:56:00,400
Speaker 1: in a culture where and I'm stating the obvious, but

979
00:56:00,440 --> 00:56:04,719
Speaker 1: we live in a culture where we're all instilled with

980
00:56:04,960 --> 00:56:08,600
Speaker 1: the belief that if you have the right combination of

981
00:56:08,640 --> 00:56:15,439
Speaker 1: like fame, money, sex, etcetera, everything's going to work out.

982
00:56:15,920 --> 00:56:19,080
Speaker 1: And I was given all of that times a thousand,

983
00:56:20,000 --> 00:56:23,719
Speaker 1: and I was never less happy. You know. So, like

984
00:56:24,560 --> 00:56:27,080
Speaker 1: the more I drank, the more people I dated, the

985
00:56:27,120 --> 00:56:28,880
Speaker 1: more drugs I did, the more money I made. And

986
00:56:28,880 --> 00:56:32,040
Speaker 1: I'm not looking for sympathy, and I'm not complaining, but

987
00:56:32,680 --> 00:56:35,719
Speaker 1: it's just an old school object lesson of Like, you know,

988
00:56:35,760 --> 00:56:38,960
Speaker 1: I found myself in a penthouse apartment on the Upper

989
00:56:39,000 --> 00:56:41,800
Speaker 1: West Side with Bono and Alec Baldwin as my neighbor,

990
00:56:42,040 --> 00:56:44,480
Speaker 1: and I've never been less happy. I love Bonno and

991
00:56:44,520 --> 00:56:47,240
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin. I'm not I'm not involving them in my despair.

992
00:56:47,800 --> 00:56:51,439
Speaker 1: But people also find out that really this roving jet

993
00:56:51,520 --> 00:56:54,799
Speaker 1: set are just not your people. Yeah, well that's the thing.

994
00:56:54,880 --> 00:56:58,279
Speaker 1: Like I grew up with the idea that like, if

995
00:56:58,320 --> 00:57:00,880
Speaker 1: you're going to a party, if you get invited to

996
00:57:00,920 --> 00:57:05,920
Speaker 1: a party with Bill Clinton and George Plimpton and Natalie Portman.

997
00:57:06,000 --> 00:57:10,080
Speaker 1: There's lots of similar sounding last names, um, and there's

998
00:57:10,160 --> 00:57:14,080
Speaker 1: all these like luminaries and celebrities, you know, like the

999
00:57:14,120 --> 00:57:18,400
Speaker 1: most remarkable famous, even at times areadite people in the world.

1000
00:57:18,440 --> 00:57:20,880
Speaker 1: Like you think, Wow, if I could just be friends

1001
00:57:20,880 --> 00:57:22,560
Speaker 1: with them, things are going to be great. And then

1002
00:57:22,600 --> 00:57:24,480
Speaker 1: you're at that party and you're like, oh, they're not

1003
00:57:24,560 --> 00:57:28,080
Speaker 1: so great, you know, like you realize, like, oh, the

1004
00:57:28,160 --> 00:57:31,600
Speaker 1: friends I grew up with are nicer and funnier, and

1005
00:57:32,200 --> 00:57:34,040
Speaker 1: the people I went to high school with actually are

1006
00:57:34,040 --> 00:57:36,640
Speaker 1: a little more insightful and humble. I'm sure you've had

1007
00:57:36,640 --> 00:57:39,080
Speaker 1: that experience mattersolutely. But then I asked, what did we am?

1008
00:57:39,120 --> 00:57:42,200
Speaker 1: I a writer and therefore inherently a loner. We all

1009
00:57:42,240 --> 00:57:43,840
Speaker 1: like the experience when you're sitting there and you get

1010
00:57:43,840 --> 00:57:46,880
Speaker 1: a letter from Bano or even Carl, etcetera. But then

1011
00:57:46,920 --> 00:57:49,760
Speaker 1: you have enough experiences where you're in these environments, the

1012
00:57:49,800 --> 00:57:52,040
Speaker 1: door opens and to go, do I really belong here?

1013
00:57:52,360 --> 00:57:54,800
Speaker 1: Is this fulfilling for me? Especially at first because it

1014
00:57:54,920 --> 00:57:58,320
Speaker 1: was so exciting and you're like, there's Gwenny's and she's

1015
00:57:58,360 --> 00:58:00,720
Speaker 1: being nice to me. And there's in such a movie

1016
00:58:00,720 --> 00:58:02,400
Speaker 1: star who even wants to go on a date with me,

1017
00:58:02,440 --> 00:58:04,600
Speaker 1: And you're like, this is great, And then you take

1018
00:58:04,640 --> 00:58:06,720
Speaker 1: a step back and you're like, but I haven't had

1019
00:58:06,760 --> 00:58:11,280
Speaker 1: a meaningful conversation with anyone. And it's basically every public

1020
00:58:11,320 --> 00:58:16,360
Speaker 1: figure I've ever met is this messy combination of entitlement

1021
00:58:16,400 --> 00:58:19,720
Speaker 1: and terror. You talk about the terror. We certainly know

1022
00:58:19,760 --> 00:58:21,840
Speaker 1: the entitle the terrors that it's going to go away.

1023
00:58:22,320 --> 00:58:27,280
Speaker 1: Speaking of going away, you have this gargantuan success with play.

1024
00:58:27,320 --> 00:58:30,800
Speaker 1: To what degree do you feel internal pressure to follow

1025
00:58:30,840 --> 00:58:34,120
Speaker 1: it up? Do something different? Can I reach this level?

1026
00:58:34,160 --> 00:58:35,760
Speaker 1: And if you look at someone like at the Pinnacle

1027
00:58:36,040 --> 00:58:38,560
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson, he has his pinnacle with thrill and when

1028
00:58:38,560 --> 00:58:42,160
Speaker 1: she tries to imitate ultimately badly. Okay, But you have

1029
00:58:42,320 --> 00:58:45,320
Speaker 1: this iconic success, and except for maybe some of the

1030
00:58:45,360 --> 00:58:48,160
Speaker 1: people in your electronic world, it might be jealous. It

1031
00:58:48,240 --> 00:58:51,160
Speaker 1: was a universally adored record and everybody loved the record.

1032
00:58:51,640 --> 00:58:55,280
Speaker 1: So moving forward, what were your thoughts moving forward? My

1033
00:58:55,320 --> 00:58:58,800
Speaker 1: thought was, I want more fame. I want more of

1034
00:58:58,840 --> 00:59:01,600
Speaker 1: everything I have. If I'm going out five nights a week,

1035
00:59:01,640 --> 00:59:03,360
Speaker 1: I want to go out seven nights a week. If

1036
00:59:03,360 --> 00:59:06,080
Speaker 1: I'm sleeping with ten people, I want to sleep with

1037
00:59:06,080 --> 00:59:09,200
Speaker 1: twenty people. If I want if I sold ten million records,

1038
00:59:09,200 --> 00:59:11,360
Speaker 1: I want to sell twenty million records. Like I lost

1039
00:59:11,440 --> 00:59:15,920
Speaker 1: my fucking mind. Like I wanted everything, but more of everything,

1040
00:59:16,480 --> 00:59:21,760
Speaker 1: and slowly things didn't work out, like you know, like

1041
00:59:21,880 --> 00:59:25,280
Speaker 1: play was the peak, and then the subsequent records the

1042
00:59:25,320 --> 00:59:30,520
Speaker 1: reviews got bad, started selling fewer tickets, etcetera. And I

1043
00:59:30,600 --> 00:59:33,880
Speaker 1: panicked because I thought that fame and records say as

1044
00:59:33,920 --> 00:59:36,880
Speaker 1: an all this. All I wanted was for everything to

1045
00:59:36,920 --> 00:59:39,160
Speaker 1: stay at the peak of play every day for the

1046
00:59:39,200 --> 00:59:44,040
Speaker 1: rest of my life, and not to anthropomorphize the universe.

1047
00:59:44,040 --> 00:59:46,680
Speaker 1: But the universe had other plans in mind form So

1048
00:59:46,880 --> 00:59:50,880
Speaker 1: but in your mind you tried to replicate the successful play.

1049
00:59:51,080 --> 00:59:53,160
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, I mean I tried to make music that

1050
00:59:53,200 --> 00:59:57,280
Speaker 1: I liked, but I tried to also tick as many

1051
00:59:57,320 --> 00:59:59,080
Speaker 1: boxes as possible. I was like, well, I want to

1052
00:59:59,440 --> 01:00:01,960
Speaker 1: I don't want to a complete lick spittle sell out,

1053
01:00:02,320 --> 01:00:04,680
Speaker 1: So I want to make music I like that. Also,

1054
01:00:04,920 --> 01:00:07,560
Speaker 1: radio programmers will like that, journalists will like that, the

1055
01:00:07,560 --> 01:00:09,600
Speaker 1: people at the record company will like that, the sync

1056
01:00:09,640 --> 01:00:12,640
Speaker 1: agents will like that, the licensees will like And I

1057
01:00:12,680 --> 01:00:15,320
Speaker 1: realized there are people who are good at that, like

1058
01:00:15,440 --> 01:00:17,760
Speaker 1: they're as you know, Like there are tons of great

1059
01:00:18,240 --> 01:00:22,240
Speaker 1: pop producers who know how to make great records that

1060
01:00:22,400 --> 01:00:25,800
Speaker 1: also do well at radio, etcetera. I'm not that person,

1061
01:00:26,280 --> 01:00:29,880
Speaker 1: you know. And the more I tried, the worst the results.

1062
01:00:29,920 --> 01:00:33,000
Speaker 1: In retrospect, if you had to do it all over again,

1063
01:00:33,520 --> 01:00:37,560
Speaker 1: would you be able to make records that resonated more

1064
01:00:37,680 --> 01:00:41,640
Speaker 1: or more successful or those those records just you know,

1065
01:00:41,720 --> 01:00:45,880
Speaker 1: it wasn't your time anymore. Um, everything is perfect. I

1066
01:00:45,880 --> 01:00:48,920
Speaker 1: mean at the time, I would have said, yes, like

1067
01:00:49,160 --> 01:00:51,560
Speaker 1: show me how to make a more successful record, show

1068
01:00:51,600 --> 01:00:53,800
Speaker 1: me how to produce a pop song that will give

1069
01:00:53,800 --> 01:00:56,240
Speaker 1: me back the career, the pinnacle that I had with play.

1070
01:00:56,280 --> 01:01:00,200
Speaker 1: But now you and I are sitting here, We're ober

1071
01:01:00,280 --> 01:01:03,960
Speaker 1: and healthy. I've got a nice bunch of people here, Um,

1072
01:01:04,000 --> 01:01:07,840
Speaker 1: and I have a perspective that's informed by success and failure.

1073
01:01:08,000 --> 01:01:09,840
Speaker 1: And if you like your perspective, you can't be too

1074
01:01:09,920 --> 01:01:11,920
Speaker 1: upset at the circumstances that have led you to have

1075
01:01:12,000 --> 01:01:14,880
Speaker 1: that perspective. Okay, let's go back to some of the

1076
01:01:14,960 --> 01:01:18,400
Speaker 1: highlights or low lights of that era. Eminem famously dissed

1077
01:01:18,440 --> 01:01:23,240
Speaker 1: you in a song, Were you happy about that MORTI five. Um.

1078
01:01:23,280 --> 01:01:25,920
Speaker 1: At first I thought it was a joke, and then

1079
01:01:25,960 --> 01:01:27,720
Speaker 1: I ran into him at the two thousand and two

1080
01:01:27,800 --> 01:01:30,320
Speaker 1: MTV Music Awards and he tried to attack me. He

1081
01:01:30,360 --> 01:01:32,760
Speaker 1: also attacked Triumph to insult comic dogs. So I was like,

1082
01:01:33,640 --> 01:01:35,840
Speaker 1: clearly he was having a bad day to go after

1083
01:01:35,960 --> 01:01:40,080
Speaker 1: like a skinny, bald vegan and a puppet. Um. But

1084
01:01:42,040 --> 01:01:43,960
Speaker 1: but up until that moment, I thought like, oh, this

1085
01:01:44,040 --> 01:01:46,640
Speaker 1: is like because I actually I don't know Eminem but

1086
01:01:46,680 --> 01:01:49,280
Speaker 1: I like some of his music. Um, I think he's

1087
01:01:49,280 --> 01:01:54,760
Speaker 1: a fascinating public figure. Uh. So I didn't know that

1088
01:01:54,840 --> 01:01:58,200
Speaker 1: it was serious like that he really hated me. So

1089
01:01:58,360 --> 01:02:01,800
Speaker 1: at this point in you've continued to make music, but

1090
01:02:01,920 --> 01:02:05,480
Speaker 1: the peak of your success is nearly two decades back.

1091
01:02:06,040 --> 01:02:09,360
Speaker 1: So what ignites you, what keeps you going? What do

1092
01:02:09,400 --> 01:02:15,040
Speaker 1: you want to do now? Uh? The goal, I'm at

1093
01:02:15,080 --> 01:02:18,360
Speaker 1: the risk of sounding too much like a vegan who

1094
01:02:18,360 --> 01:02:21,680
Speaker 1: lives in Los Angeles who meditates. The goal is just like,

1095
01:02:21,720 --> 01:02:25,400
Speaker 1: it's the pursuit of beauty. It's the idea that every

1096
01:02:25,480 --> 01:02:28,640
Speaker 1: day when I go into my studio there's an opportunity

1097
01:02:28,880 --> 01:02:31,880
Speaker 1: to make something beautiful. Not that I do, but it's

1098
01:02:32,360 --> 01:02:38,400
Speaker 1: I've always admired the work ethic of like Flannery, O'Connor, Picasso, soldiers,

1099
01:02:38,440 --> 01:02:41,520
Speaker 1: and like the people who just day in, day out worked,

1100
01:02:42,160 --> 01:02:44,880
Speaker 1: you know, and you show up with the hope that

1101
01:02:44,920 --> 01:02:48,320
Speaker 1: you'll be inspired and inspired in the old etymological sense

1102
01:02:48,320 --> 01:02:50,880
Speaker 1: of inspired, to have like the breath of inspiration breathed

1103
01:02:50,920 --> 01:02:54,720
Speaker 1: into And if I spend my entire life trying to

1104
01:02:54,760 --> 01:02:57,320
Speaker 1: do that and it doesn't work out, at least I

1105
01:02:57,400 --> 01:03:00,840
Speaker 1: loved the process of doing it. And do you make music?

1106
01:03:00,920 --> 01:03:04,280
Speaker 1: How frequently? Every day without every day? But you don't

1107
01:03:04,280 --> 01:03:07,240
Speaker 1: release all that music either about six or seven thousand

1108
01:03:07,320 --> 01:03:10,040
Speaker 1: unreleased songs. And but we live in an era where

1109
01:03:10,080 --> 01:03:12,400
Speaker 1: theoretically you could release that, except a lot of it's

1110
01:03:12,440 --> 01:03:17,000
Speaker 1: not good. So what do you feel? How do you

1111
01:03:17,040 --> 01:03:19,600
Speaker 1: feel about all the changes in the music business? You

1112
01:03:19,640 --> 01:03:22,800
Speaker 1: know there are issues of music monetization, but it used

1113
01:03:22,840 --> 01:03:25,640
Speaker 1: to be especially you know, you were like the tail

1114
01:03:25,760 --> 01:03:27,760
Speaker 1: end of this with play. We lived on a monoculture

1115
01:03:28,000 --> 01:03:30,760
Speaker 1: and if you were successful, everybody knew you. Whereas a

1116
01:03:30,880 --> 01:03:33,080
Speaker 1: Vici dies, I'm getting emails saying I never heard one

1117
01:03:33,080 --> 01:03:35,160
Speaker 1: of his songs, even though weak Me Up five years

1118
01:03:35,160 --> 01:03:37,080
Speaker 1: ago was one of the biggest records of all time.

1119
01:03:37,280 --> 01:03:39,480
Speaker 1: So what's it like being a musician in this era?

1120
01:03:39,880 --> 01:03:44,200
Speaker 1: I mean to stomach, and I feel like I can't

1121
01:03:44,320 --> 01:03:46,760
Speaker 1: speak to that experience, you know, because I'm fifty two

1122
01:03:46,800 --> 01:03:49,440
Speaker 1: years old. I sold a lot of records a long

1123
01:03:49,480 --> 01:03:53,840
Speaker 1: time ago. Um. So, like whenever I if I do

1124
01:03:53,920 --> 01:03:56,200
Speaker 1: interviews and I talked about my opinions about the current

1125
01:03:56,240 --> 01:04:00,440
Speaker 1: state of the music business, understandably, so will tend to

1126
01:04:00,480 --> 01:04:04,480
Speaker 1: dismiss my opinion. They're like, I understand, I believe, we understand.

1127
01:04:06,440 --> 01:04:09,960
Speaker 1: And what gets you off now other than making music?

1128
01:04:10,080 --> 01:04:12,800
Speaker 1: What what turns you on? Uh? Well, so, But to

1129
01:04:12,880 --> 01:04:17,240
Speaker 1: your question about the music business selfishly, personally, I love

1130
01:04:17,400 --> 01:04:19,520
Speaker 1: the current state as the music business. I love how

1131
01:04:19,560 --> 01:04:23,520
Speaker 1: egalitarian it is. Um. I love that anyone anywhere in

1132
01:04:23,520 --> 01:04:26,200
Speaker 1: the world can make music and actually potentially have an

1133
01:04:26,240 --> 01:04:32,480
Speaker 1: audience for it. UM, I don't love We'll think of

1134
01:04:32,480 --> 01:04:35,520
Speaker 1: it like a qualitative gray goo. Do you remember the

1135
01:04:35,560 --> 01:04:38,440
Speaker 1: concept of a gray goo? Don't know that at some

1136
01:04:38,520 --> 01:04:41,480
Speaker 1: point automated technology would get to the point where like

1137
01:04:41,520 --> 01:04:43,800
Speaker 1: just we're just spewing out stuff and the world would

1138
01:04:43,840 --> 01:04:47,480
Speaker 1: be covered in gray goo. And I think musically we

1139
01:04:47,600 --> 01:04:50,400
Speaker 1: sometimes are at risk of that we're like, it's very

1140
01:04:50,440 --> 01:04:55,320
Speaker 1: easy to make okay music, you know, with Ableton without

1141
01:04:55,320 --> 01:04:57,920
Speaker 1: and I love these software platforms. But it's easy to

1142
01:04:58,000 --> 01:05:03,640
Speaker 1: make music that's pretty good. But what about imagine? You know,

1143
01:05:03,680 --> 01:05:06,080
Speaker 1: what about Cat Stevens, what about the Rolling Stones? What

1144
01:05:06,160 --> 01:05:10,960
Speaker 1: about like when music is transcendent? I I don't hear

1145
01:05:11,000 --> 01:05:13,160
Speaker 1: that much of it. I know it's being made, but

1146
01:05:13,240 --> 01:05:15,400
Speaker 1: I feel like I do miss when you had, like

1147
01:05:15,480 --> 01:05:19,040
Speaker 1: professional musicians who would like when Leonard Collin would write

1148
01:05:19,040 --> 01:05:21,360
Speaker 1: to Suzanne and it took him three years to write

1149
01:05:21,360 --> 01:05:25,440
Speaker 1: that song. I missed that, you know that the transcendence.

1150
01:05:25,760 --> 01:05:29,320
Speaker 1: But I also like how democratic and egalitarian, you know.

1151
01:05:29,360 --> 01:05:30,920
Speaker 1: I like that you know, all the barriers are done,

1152
01:05:30,960 --> 01:05:33,640
Speaker 1: everybody can play, but just as a fan, it's hard

1153
01:05:33,680 --> 01:05:36,840
Speaker 1: to wait get through them. Morass, there's so much stuff.

1154
01:05:36,840 --> 01:05:38,640
Speaker 1: I mean, you go on Spotify, listen to the Spotify

1155
01:05:38,680 --> 01:05:41,120
Speaker 1: Top fifty, and then you know there's all the genres.

1156
01:05:41,480 --> 01:05:44,400
Speaker 1: It's overwhelming. In any event, we've come to the end

1157
01:05:44,440 --> 01:05:47,520
Speaker 1: of the feeling we've known, and I thank you all

1158
01:05:47,560 --> 01:05:52,120
Speaker 1: for attending. Moby has been incredible. Very are unite intellectual

1159
01:05:52,160 --> 01:05:54,680
Speaker 1: responses yourself. I could go on for another hour, but

1160
01:05:54,720 --> 01:05:57,280
Speaker 1: they tell us our time is up once again. Mob.

1161
01:06:04,040 --> 01:06:06,360
Speaker 1: That wraps up this week's episode of the Bob Left

1162
01:06:06,360 --> 01:06:10,320
Speaker 1: Sets podcast, recorded live on the University of Southern California

1163
01:06:10,400 --> 01:06:13,480
Speaker 1: campus at the l A Times Festival of Books. I

1164
01:06:13,520 --> 01:06:17,520
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this fascinating conversation with Moby. As always,

1165
01:06:17,560 --> 01:06:20,080
Speaker 1: I welcome your feedback. Email me at Bob at left

1166
01:06:20,040 --> 01:06:23,800
Speaker 1: sets dot com. Until next time, It's Bob left Sez

1167
01:06:34,760 --> 01:06:40,480
Speaker 1: think me reas don't know exactly